Research ReportOctober 2018

Initial Teacher Education and English as an Additional Language

Authors:Dr Yvonne FoleyDr Charles AndersonDr Jean ContehJonathan Hancock

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Funded by The Bell Foundation and Unbound Philanthropy

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English as an Additional Language and Initial Teacher Education

Authors: Dr Yvonne Foley (University of Edinburgh), Dr Charles Anderson (University of Edinburgh), Dr Jean Conteh (University of Leeds), Jonathan Hancock (University of

Edinburgh)

© 2018 by The University of Edinburgh

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List of contents

Page Chapter 1: Introduction 3 Chapter 2: Policy and Educational Context 7 Chapter 3: Method 22 Chapter 4: Background of the student respondents 31 Chapter 5: Conceptualisations of EAL and of Professional

Responsibilities 36 Chapter 6: Talking and Thinking about Language 43 Chapter 7: Meeting Language and Literacy Needs 58 Chapter 8: Teacher Confidence and Teacher Education 67 Chapter 9: Key Findings, Insights and Recommendations 82 References 89 Glossary 97

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Chapter 1: Introduction Rationale There are currently 1,538,724 million pupils in schools in the maintained sector1 in England learning English as an Additional Language (EAL), 18% of the school population (DfE, 2018). Department for Education figures report that over one in five (21.2%) of state-funded primary school pupils in England – do not have English as their first language. In secondary schools the figure stands at 16.6%. The number of pupils in both primary and secondary schools who had a first language other than English rose by 0.5% between January 2017 and January 2018, and has been steadily rising since 2006 (DfE, 2018). The question then arises of whether student teachers are being adequately prepared to meet the needs of these pupils and to respond creatively to the challenges and opportunities that arise in this ‘era of increased cultural and linguistic diversity’ (Dooley et al., 2013, p.65). Put more bluntly is initial teacher education sufficiently responsive to the realities of multilingual classrooms? Although in the past two decades there has been a significant increase in the number of research studies which have focused on the teaching and learning of English as an Additional Language (EAL), considerably less attention has been paid to Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes. There are only a limited number of studies that report on research into how university Schools of Education prepare ITE students to meet the increasingly varied needs of EAL learners in mainstream subject classrooms and that explore the conceptual underpinnings of university EAL courses (Bernhard, Diaz and Allgood, 2005; Grant and Gilette, 2006; Butcher, Sinka and Troman, 2007; Murakami, 2008; Cajkler and Hall, 2009; Skinner, 2010; Anderson et al., 2016b; Foley et al., 2013); and there are only a few studies that require student teachers to evaluate the usefulness of their university-based EAL courses (Anderson et al., 2016b; Brentnall, 2015). Research also needs to widen out to consider the views of student teachers who are enrolled across the variety of training routes that are now available in England. The current study, co-funded by Unbound Philanthropy and The Bell Foundation, extends our preceding efforts (Anderson et al., 2016b; Foley et al., 2013) to begin to fill this key gap in the literature and in practice. This final report on the study is addressed primarily to fellow researchers in this field and to teacher educators; and the accompanying executive summary that states key findings and draws out recommendations for policy and practice aims to reach a wider audience. Aims of the study The key aims of this research project were to investigate to what extent initial teacher education programmes in England are preparing student teachers to meet the language and literacy needs of EAL learners, and to design resources to extend the knowledge base of teacher educators and student teachers in relation to meeting these needs.

1 This figure does not include independent schools or academies.

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We therefore set out to gather teacher educators’ and student teachers’ views on:

To what extent their ITE programmes prepare student teachers to meet the language and literacy needs of learners with EAL.

To what extent teacher educators feel prepared to extend the knowledge base, skills and practices of student teachers as they try to meet the language and literacy needs of EAL learners.

The modules, materials and Continued Professional Development (CPD) sessions designed by the research team, using an inclusive approach, that aim to extend the knowledge base of teacher educators and student teachers in relation to meeting the language and literacy needs of pupils with EAL.

The study This report describes a study conducted at nine initial teacher education sites, named as site 1 to site 9. The research was primarily focused at site 1 and site 2, two institutions located in widely separated areas of England, where interviews and focus groups were conducted with teacher educators and student teachers. Two online surveys were also conducted at Site 1 and Site 2, and extended across a further 7 ITE sites in England. These information-gathering exercises guided the development of draft resources to enhance the understanding and practice of ITE tutors and their students in relation to EAL. This development work was followed by a piloting phase of the project, in which feedback on the draft resources was gained principally through focus groups. The piloting of resources took place first at sites 1 and 2, and was then extended to include Site 3, Site 8 and an additional site outside the main study. Terminology It is important to bear in mind that there are a number of terms used in published research to refer to pupils learning English as an additional language. We have chosen to use the term EAL in this report as it allows us to refer to a commonality of issues that are linked to an increasingly diverse group of students. This diversity can be described in a number of ways. For example, some EAL pupils are literate in their home languages, while others have limited literacy or are considered to have no literacy in any languages; some pupils are refugees, while others are children of migrants who have moved to England to improve their economic situation. Some EAL pupils are new to England, while others are second or third generation migrants who have not yet developed the type of advanced literacy skills needed to access the curriculum successfully. Some have developed fluency in English conversational skills and others have developed some literacies associated with reading and writing, but have no conversational ability (Gibbons, 2009:8). It is also necessary to remain alert to the fact that students who are learning EAL possess distinctly varying levels of proficiency in English. The term itself does not take into account the EAL pupil’s English language proficiency level or their ability in reading in their first or additional languages.

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The EAL student population is also socioeconomically diverse. Some come from families with high levels of income and education, while others have lived in poverty and have had little formal schooling (Hutchinson, 2018). It is important to recognise these socio-economic differences, given that family socio-economic status and education level influence the academic achievement of students (Strand et al., 2015; Goldenberg et al., 2011). Research indicates that low-income EAL students are usually behind their peers from higher socio-economic backgrounds in language skills and that they need culturally responsive teaching (Cartledge and Kourea, 2008). The EAL student population in the UK cannot therefore be viewed simply as a homogenous group; rather, they comprise a wide and diverse population and one that is becoming increasingly diverse as refugees and other migrants continue to arrive in the UK. Accordingly, we remain alert to the fact that the term EAL is not unproblematic. In addition, we are aware that while English is a core subject in schools, it is also the ‘language of schooling’ and the medium of instruction for the whole curriculum (Gibbons, 1993; Met, 1994; Snow et al., 1992). Students – both those for whom English is their first language and those for whom it is a second or additional language – therefore have to apply their knowledge and understanding of speaking, listening, reading and writing to other areas of subject knowledge. Yet the term EAL tends to suggest that learning English is an end in itself, rather than also being a means to help EAL learners to access subject content knowledge that is being delivered through the medium of English (Anderson et al., 2016a). Probyn (2010) reported the high levels of stress that learners experience in teaching and learning through the medium of a language in which they are not able to communicate freely, with negative consequences for learning; and Jordaan (2013) has argued that low levels of achievement in literacy could be attributed to the fact that English remains the main medium of instruction. Paxton (2009) found that, even at university level, students for whom English was not their first language struggled with learning new concepts because of unfamiliar grammatical structures and that they frequently engaged in codeswitching between languages to negotiate meaning and to understand new concepts better. Because in the UK EAL is not a distinct subject, but rather is what Leung (2001, unpaginated) terms ‘a diffuse curriculum area’, there is an erroneous belief that learning an additional language across the curriculum will develop naturally in the school environment or will be achieved through English as a subject. Effective teachers have long recognised that this is not the case, and that EAL learners require explicit instruction to help them to make the connections between English as a subject and English as a medium of instruction within all the subjects that feature in the school curriculum. Organisation of the report The introduction to this report has set out the wider research context against which the current study is placed, outlined the main aims of the study and pointed up key considerations concerning terminology. The following chapter sets out the policy and educational context in England which impacts on ITE providers, student teachers and provision for EAL learners. This is followed by a description of the methods adopted for this study, which includes an account of the surveys and the methods employed at the interview and piloting stages.

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Attention then turns to the findings, starting with a short chapter that gives a succinct picture of the backgrounds of the student respondents to the surveys. This chapter includes a summary of their perceptions of their own capacities to speak other languages and the educational, life and work experience they were bringing that was pertinent to working with EAL learners. The following Findings chapters are organised around the four key themes that emerged during analysis: Conceptualisations of EAL and of Professional Responsibilities; Talking and Thinking about Language; Meeting Language and Literacy Needs; Teacher Confidence and Teacher Education. These themes encapsulate the analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data gathered from the surveys of the student teachers and from the interviews with teacher educators and student teachers in the initial and piloting phases of the project. Within each theme our findings are framed within relevant bodies of literature and where relevant points of comparison or contrast with preceding studies are highlighted. This has involved us in drawing on the following main bodies of literature: first language acquisition; literacy and multiliteracies; multilingual theories of language development; teacher education. The discussion of these themes sets out how the project’s findings have underpinned the development of resources. A succinct account is then given of the nature of, and the rationale for, the resources that have been developed to date. The final chapter highlights key findings, and makes recommendations.

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Chapter 2: Policy and Educational Contexts This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical framing and of the policy and practice contexts of the project. It begins by providing a brief review of the ways in which English as an Additional Language (EAL) is situated within the academic field of Second Language Education (SLE) in a rapidly changing, multilingual world. This raises questions, which have important implications for the project, about the ways that EAL is currently understood and the status it holds in the wider field of language education. This section necessarily uses theoretical concepts that may be unfamiliar to non-specialist readers, so a glossary of the words highlighted in bold is provided at the end of the report. Following this, the main body of the chapter gives an overview of the national education policy context in England and the ways in which it has responded to the challenges of language and cultural diversity. This covers the key matters of funding, the curriculum and the current situation in initial teacher education. Theoretical Contexts: Second Language Education and ‘EAL’ We live in a multilingual world where it is normal for people to use different languages in their daily lives in fluid ways to accomplish their purposes, construct their social relationships and affirm their identities. But many researchers around the world have pointed out how multilingualism as a social phenomenon is constructed in negative ways in social policy, as it often is in the media. Multilingualism is often seen as a challenge to national identity and a risk to community and social cohesion. Many researchers have also gone on to show how this affects the ways in which language diversity is perceived and addressed in education systems in different national contexts. EAL policy and practice in England2 can be seen to be influenced by such negative constructions. Safford and Drury (2013), for example, show how bi/multilingual children have systematically been constructed over the years as a ‘problem’ in educational policy in England in relation to pedagogy, curriculum and assessment. Thus, we argue, the issues that surround research, policy and practice for EAL learners in mainstream schools in England are complex. A broad perspective that takes account of this complexity is needed to understand how to improve their opportunities for success. Conteh and Meier (2014) and May (2014) argue that we have reached a ‘multilingual turn’ in understanding and theorising language in society and the classroom policies and practices required to meet the needs of teaching and learning in multilingual classrooms. Debates about how language should be theorised, researched and mediated in classrooms to take account of multilingualism are not new. Firth and Wagner (1997, p. 296) were among the first to call for a change to the strong focus on cognitive and psycholinguistic approaches that prevailed, and which – it can be argued – still do. They advocated an analytical approach to pedagogy in SLE that concerned itself with ‘how language is used as it is being acquired through interaction, and used resourcefully, contingently and contextually.’

2 A rather more nuanced statement would be required here if we were commenting on the other

nations within the UK, particularly Wales.

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May (2014, pp.12-16) argues for the importance of this approach, but tracks the forceful and negative responses which it has received from many established academics in the field. In considering why this should be, he uses Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field and practice to account for the low status of research that addresses policy and pedagogy in multilingual contexts. He suggests that this reflects:

a multilingual habitus within a monolingual field;

a low-status intellectual field;

a poorly defined set of practices. Thus, it can be argued that EAL in England does not have a well-defined position in the curriculum (Leung, 2001). It has until recently been somewhat overlooked as a field of language education research and lacks a recognised academic identity. Moreover, there is no generally agreed, ‘official’ set of classroom strategies and practices to address the needs of EAL learners. Using Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing, May (2014) goes on to argue that EAL, along with other developing approaches to ‘multilingual pedagogy’ within the field of second language education, needs to be seen as an applied field or ‘region’ (to adopt Bernstein’s term). This allows the possibility of ‘a more reflexive, porous understanding of the origins and dominant research principles underlying particular academic disciplines.’ May suggests (pp. 17-18) that:

In the first instance, such reflexivity provides the basis for critically analysing the normative research questions and understandings previously established within disciplines.

He goes on to argue that such a stance could lead to transformation in both theory and practice and a significant move forward in developing effective multilingual pedagogies:

Greater interdisciplinarity thus opens up the possibilities of reconceptualising and/or reconfiguring disciplines in order to overcome theoretical and research impasses, particularly where these impasses arise directly from existing disciplinary hierarchies of power and control.

This challenge to the established hierarchies of academic disciplines clearly has important implications for the ways in which elements of Second Language Education such as EAL need to be conceptualised, and also the kinds of research that are needed to move matters forward. We argue that EAL, as a newly emerging region of language education, needs to be understood as still fluid and in contention in policy and practice. Our approach in this project has been guided by this view and we have endeavoured to be open to the different ways in which EAL is mediated by all participants, particularly those directly involved in the provision of initial teacher education.

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The Policy Context in England Language Diversity and Policy Responses Superdiversity Vertovec, (2007) introduced the term ‘superdiversity’ to describe communities with complex histories of language and cultural diversity, such as many multilingual cities across Britain. Such communities, which have experienced successive waves of migration sometimes over many generations, can no longer be understood using only the ‘traditional’ variables of race, gender and class. They need more nuanced and multi-layered kinds of research. The histories of each city and the groups who live in them are hugely diverse and this complexity is clearly reflected in their schools. Many pupils arrive at school already speaking more than one language and may be learning English as their third or fourth language. Some areas have experienced diversity over many years, but in certain localities, language diversity is a new phenomenon and there is only a fairly small minority of pupils who speak languages other than English, (see, Hutchinson, 2018). This is a point that we will return to when we consider participants’ comments in interview on the marked differences in the degree to which student teachers encountered EAL pupils in their placement schools. Using data from the 2016 schools census, Table 2.1 gives a clear sense of the very wide range of languages that are currently spoken by learners within English classrooms. (We have used 0.1% of the proportion of pupils in England as the cut-off point for this table. A very long list of other languages follows on from this cut-off point in the DfE’s full set of figures.) The categories ‘Other than English’ and ‘Believed to be other than English’, which together constitute 8.7% of the pupils who do not fall under the category of ‘English’ as a first language, can be seen to point to the difficulties inherent in such a survey exercise. Table 2.1 reveals that a considerable number of pupils have one of the languages of the Indian subcontinent as their first language. Of pupils who are not categorised as having English as their first language, the three leading groups are the 9.9% who speak Urdu, the 8.2% who speak Polish and the 7.0% who speak Punjabi.

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Table 2.1: First language of pupils in state-funded schools in England, DfE, January 2016.

Language No. of pupils Proportion of pupils English 5,668,561 81.51%

Urdu 127,101 1.83% Polish 105,569 1.52% Punjabi 3 90,673 1.30% Other than English 81,852 1.18% Bengali 75,700 1.09% Somali 46,700 0.67% Arabic 45,553 0.66% Gujarati 41,028 0.59% Portuguese 31,804 0.46% Tamil 31,018 0.45% Believed to be other than English 29,236 0.42% French 27,349 0.39% Spanish 25,280 0.36% Romanian 24,793 0.36% Turkish 23,929 0.34% Believed to be English 22,276 0.32% Lithuanian 19,770 0.28% Bengali (Sylheti) 17,467 0.25% Panjabi (Mirpuri) 17,326 0.25% Yoruba 17,100 0.25% Pashto/Pakhto 16,457 0.24% Italian 15,788 0.23% Albanian/Shqip 13,791 0.20% Malayalam 13,518 0.19% Russian 12,999 0.19% Chinese 12,560 0.18% Slovak 12,337 0.18% Hindi 12,292 0.18% Kurdish 9,111 0.13% Hungarian 8,661 0.12% Bulgarian 8,547 0.12% Tagalog/Filipino 8,320 0.12% Nepali 8,139 0.12% Information not obtained 7,932 0.11% Akan/TwiFante 7,605 0.11% Persian/Farsi 7,586 0.11% German 7,386 0.11% Czech 7,336 0.11% Latvian 7,283 0.10% Shona 6,942 0.10%

3 Punjabi is the most common native language in Pakistan. The alternate spelling, ‘Panjabi’ is commonly used in official documents in England. This spelling is often used elsewhere for the version of the language used by Sikh rather than Muslim speakers.

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As we have noted earlier, added to the diversity in first languages is diversity in:

prior exposure to English;

prior experience of schooling;

prior literacy experiences;

length of residence in England;

the social circumstances of EAL pupils. These differences are reflected in the following list of terms that have been used over the years in policy documents4 in England to describe EAL learners:

Learners who are second and third generation members of settled ethnic minority communities (advanced bilingual learners).

Learners who are recent arrivals and new to English, some of whom have little or no experience of schooling, and others who are already literate in their first languages (children new to English).

Learners whose education has been disrupted because of war and other traumatic experiences (asylum-seekers and refugees).

Learners who are in school settings which have had little prior experience of bilingual children (isolated learners).

Learners whose parents are working and studying and are in England for short periods of time (sojourners).

Funding

In 1966, ‘Section 11’ of the Local Government Act directed funds to meet the various needs of pupils of ‘New Commonwealth’ origin. Among other things, this funding supported the teaching of English to EAL and bilingual learners. Later developments saw this support replaced by the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant (EMAG), which was intended to narrow achievement gaps for pupils from ethnic minority backgrounds and those learning English as an additional language. This ring-fenced grant was distributed to Local Authorities and enabled them to provide a service that centrally employed teachers to support such pupils. In 2011, a significant change in resources for EAL in England saw the loss of EMAG. Revisions in the structuring of expenditure saw this grant mainstreamed into the Direct Schools Grant (DSG), where schools were given decision making power in terms of how the funding was to 4 Documents such as: Department for Education and Employment (DfES) (1998) The National Literacy Strategy: Framework for Teaching. London, HMSO. DfES (2004) Aiming High: Understanding the Educational Needs of Minority Ethnic Pupils in Mainly

White Schools. Ref: DfES/0416/2004. http://www.naldic.org.uk/Resources Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2006) Excellence and enjoyment: learning and teaching for bilingual pupils in the primary years. Ref: 0013-2006PCK-EN Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2007) New arrivals excellence programme: guidance. London: DfES.

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be used. This restructuring ended the requirement for funding to be spent on black and minority ethic (BME) pupils and those learning EAL. Alongside the change to this funding, greater emphasis was being placed on school target setting, which resulted in an increased focus on outcomes for BME pupils, including those learning EAL. Hutchinson states that the impact of consolidating EMAG into general school funding has had a mixed effect (Hutchinson, 2018, p 16). In some cases, EAL central services across a small number of local authorities, where there a larger numbers of EAL pupils in schools, receive more funding than they received under EMAG’s previous restrictions. However, it is recognised more widely, that the trend has been for local authorities to reduce or stop funding EAL central services. ‘The number of LAs with no central EAL spending has increased from 39 to 72 since 2011-2012’ (Hutchinson, 2018, p16). Currently, the new national funding system for schools is guided by pupil-led factors (e.g. the number and characteristics of pupils in schools, which includes those with EAL status) in an attempt to ensure that money is allocated more consistently across English schools. While recognising that the values and goals behind the new funding mechanism aim to provide a fairer system, Hutchinson notes that the ‘proposed implementation of the formula has been controversial due to the overall level of funding passing through the formula, combined with significant increases in schools’ staffing costs, which result in real term losses for many schools’ (2018, p17). It is important to recognise that any aim to support EAL is intricately tied to the broader changes within the funding system and that these aims and processes cannot be interpreted outside of such mechanisms. Added to this, the shift in England in initial teacher education (ITE) from university-based to school-based training, which is outlined below, has led to changes in funding arrangements for this sector of education. The bulk of funding now goes into schools through partnership arrangements with accrediting bodies, usually – but not always – universities. One main effect of this has been to decentralise provision, including the content of ITE courses. The Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2011) still remain the statutory criteria, but are described as ‘the minimum level of practice expected of trainees and teachers from the point of being awarded QTS’ (p. 6). The ways in which the standards are met and the overall balance of provision are left to the providers themselves. With pressure to prioritise a whole range of competing demands, EAL is not always given the weighting it deserves. The National Curriculum Despite the growing numbers of EAL learners in the mainstream system and their complex needs, national policy in England, including the Teachers’ Standards mentioned above, does not provide a great deal of guidance for teachers and school managers. The National Curriculum Statutory Guidance, (Dec. 2014) (DfE, 2014b), Section 4 sets out principles for the inclusion of all pupils, with two main requirements:

Setting suitable challenges.

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Responding to pupils’ needs and overcoming potential barriers for individuals and groups of pupils.

As part of the second, two principles are stated (on p. 9) which relate specifically to EAL:

4.5 Teachers must also take account of the needs of pupils whose first language is not English. Monitoring of progress should take account of the pupil’s age, length of time in this country, previous educational experience and ability in other languages.

4.6 The ability of pupils for whom English is an additional language to take part

in the national curriculum may be in advance of their communication skills in English. Teachers should plan teaching opportunities to help pupils develop their English and should aim to provide the support pupils need to take part in all subjects.

Though brief, these two statements do contain essential guidance for schools on meeting the needs of their EAL learners, indicating the need to take account of pupils’ prior experience in language and education and of language across the curriculum. While they hint at the importance of mediating the needs of newly arrived pupils, they do not provide any specific guidance as to how this could be done. Assessment of both the abilities and the learning needs of EAL pupils has always been very problematic in the English system. The DfE School Census for 2016 to 2017 introduced a set of proficiency scales in English, with the following objectives:

… to inform policy on this high needs group with the basic rationale being that current data on EAL pupils does not distinguish between pupils who lack a basic command of the English language versus those who are bilingual and have mastered English sufficiently to access the curriculum. This information will therefore help the Department understand how effective the education sector is for EAL pupils by providing valuable statistical information on the characteristics of these children and along with their attainment and destinations, will allow us to measure whether the individual pupils, or the schools they attend, face additional educational challenges. (DfE, 2017a, p. 63)

There are five bands, which do begin to indicate the complexity of making useful judgements through assessment, and the importance of making links between the home language and English:

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A: NEW TO ENGLISH: May use first language, remain silent, copy/repeat words; may understand everyday English but have minimal or no literacy in English; needs considerable EAL support. B: EARLY ACQUISITION: May follow social communication and take part in learning with support; understand simple instructions, follow narrative/accounts; have developed some reading skills, subject-specific vocabulary; needs significant EAL support.

C: DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE: Increasing independence; able to express self in English; grammatical inaccuracies; needs ongoing support for literacy; may be able to follow more complex written English; needs ongoing EAL support. D: COMPETENT: Successful engagement across the curriculum; understand a wide variety of texts; occasional errors in structure of written English; needs support to develop abstract vocabulary and nuances of meaning; needs occasional EAL support. E: FLUENT: Can operate across the curriculum comparably to English L1 pupil; operates without EAL support.

The Bell Foundation has recently developed the EAL Assessment Framework for Schools (The Bell Foundation, 2017) to support teachers in assessing their EAL pupils according to these bands: https://www.bell-foundation.org.uk/eal-programme/teaching-resources/eal-assessment-framework/. National Curriculum: Language and Literacy Teachers’ engagement with EAL learners takes place against the backdrop of the general statements in the National Curriculum concerning language and literacy and the detailed requirements that it sets out for English as a subject. Looking first at overarching statements within the National Curriculum concerning language and literacy, there is an unequivocal message that their development is in effect the responsibility of all teachers: ‘Teachers should develop pupils’ spoken language, reading, writing and vocabulary as integral aspects of the teaching of every subject’ (DfE, 2014b, 6.1). The guideline on ‘vocabulary development’ notes that: ‘Pupils’ acquisition and command of vocabulary are key to their learning and progress across the whole curriculum. Teachers should therefore develop vocabulary actively, building systematically on pupils’ current

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knowledge’ (DfE, 2014b, 6.4). Some attention is also given to developing the lexis of individual subjects:

… it is vital for pupils’ comprehension that they understand the meanings of words they meet in their reading across all subjects, and older pupils should be taught the meaning of instruction verbs that they may meet in examination questions. It is particularly important to induct pupils into the language which defines each subject in its own right, such as accurate mathematical and scientific language (DfE, 2014b, 6.4).

This message is reinforced in some of the subject specific sections of the National Curriculum, with the section on Science stating:

Pupils should be able to describe associated processes and key characteristics in common language, but they should also be familiar with, and use, technical terminology accurately and precisely. They should build up an extended specialist vocabulary (DfE, 2014a, p.168).

If these prescriptions are consistently followed by schools, EAL pupils should be taught in a context where considerable care is being taken over the development of subject-specific vocabulary. English Turning to the framework that is set out for English as a subject, we will draw out a number of its features that are pertinent to the learning and teaching of EAL pupils. This framework is largely structured under the headings of spoken language, reading and writing. As Noble-Rogers and Rose acknowledge in the document they produced pointing up changes introduced by the National Curriculum English Framework (NCEF): ‘Speaking and listening is presented as a single set of outcomes.’ (Rogers and Rose, 2014, p.4). While the NCEF does require teachers to ‘ensure the continual development of pupils’ confidence and competence in spoken language and listening skills [italics added]’, it does not include any detailed guidance on how listening skills are to be fostered. There is also no guidance given on how teachers themselves can act to foster pupils’ active listening to, and processing of, subject content. It can be argued that, for EAL pupils in particular, it is an unfortunate omission that there is no separate and sustained consideration of listening as a language mode. A central thrust of the National Curriculum in English is the explicit teaching of both spelling and ‘grammar’, as the following statement indicates:

Pupils should be taught to control their speaking and writing consciously and to use Standard English. They should be taught to use the elements of spelling, grammar, punctuation and ‘language about language’ listed. This is not intended to constrain or restrict teachers’ creativity, but simply to provide the structure on

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which they can construct exciting lessons. A non-statutory Glossary is provided for teachers. (DfE, 2014a, p.16)

Rogers and Rose (2014, p.3) note that this knowledge about language needs to be ‘both taught directly and contextualised so that pupils are able to apply correct spelling and grammatical knowledge and become increasingly effective writers across the curriculum.’ The ‘Non-statutory Glossary’ referred to in the preceding quotation is a quite extensive listing of linguistic terms that are clearly defined often in ways that highlight their linguistic function rather than being a simple descriptive gloss on the term. It also acts to correct common but inaccurate understandings of grammatical terminology5. This glossary can be viewed as a helpful resource for teachers’ professional development in the area of language and as a means of ensuring that they share the same metalanguage for talking about language among themselves and with their pupils. In constructing resources in the project, we have followed the (standard) usages in this glossary, rather than say adopting the somewhat different linguistic constructs employed within systemic functional linguistics (Coffin, Donohue and North, 2009). This was largely a practical decision so that the resources could more easily be aligned with the National Curriculum glossary. Having an agreed language with which to discuss language can be seen to be a key matter for teachers in their interactions with EAL learners. It can also be argued that concentrating teachers’ attention on the direct teaching of knowledge of language moves them away from a reliance on their implicitly acquired network of knowledge about English to a more explicit understanding of English morphology and grammar that can inform their work with EAL pupils. However, as the following paragraphs will reveal, the particular approach to, and set of requirements for, the teaching of grammar within the national curriculum has sparked controversy. First, though, it is important to give a sense of the scope of the spelling and grammar content that pupils are expected to achieve. This in turn points up the demands that these curricular prescriptions make on current and trainee teachers’ knowledge of the English language and pedagogical expertise concerning how best to convey this knowledge to pupils. The National Curriculum sets out a trajectory of detailed prescriptions for spelling and grammar to be followed through Key Stages 1 to 4. On spelling, there is a strong emphasis in the early stages on work in synthetic phonics. A statutory appendix, Appendix 1, contains a

5 As an illustration of both these features, the following definition is provided for adjective, and for this and other definitions, a number of examples are also provided: The surest way to identify adjectives is by the ways they are used:

Before a noun, to make the noun’s meaning more specific (i.e. to modify the noun), or

After the verb be, as its complement. … Adjectives are sometimes called ‘describing words’ because they pick out single characteristics such as size or colour. This is often true, but it doesn’t help to distinguish adjectives from other word classes.

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very extensive list of spelling patterns that have to be mastered. In addition, there is a prescribed list of 100 words whose spelling is to be learned in Years 3 and 4, and another list of 100 words for Years 5 and 6. For grammar there is also a clearly defined set of prescribed content, (set out in statutory Appendix 2: Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation), with, for example, plural noun suffixes featuring among the content to be covered in Year 1 and subordination in Year 2. It is notable that a large proportion of the spelling and grammatical knowledge to be covered in the curriculum as a whole is located in the primary school years, making consequent demands on the language, and associated pedagogical, knowledge of primary school teachers. The range of grammatical knowledge that teachers may need to acquire to teach the framework for English set out in the National Curriculum is indicated in the following list presented by Rogers and Rose (2014, p.12):

There is a considerable amount of ‘new’ grammatical knowledge which many teachers may need to learn, including: subordination and coordination; the continuous/progressive verb form; use of conjunctions, adverbs and prepositions to express time and cause; fronted adverbials; the subjunctive; active and passive voice; modal verbs or adverbs; relative clauses; cohesive devices: semantic cohesion, grammatical connection, elision; adverbials of time, place and number. [presented as bullet points in the original text]

Whatever stance one may take on the desirability or otherwise of the curricular changes that have been outlined in the preceding paragraphs, such changes have created a rather different learning landscape for EAL pupils and their teachers. We have been alert to this changed landscape in our own research and development work. Moving to consider work that has scrutinised the new curriculum in English and its possible effects, the closest analysis to date has been provided in a combined response by CLPE, NAAE, NATE and UKLA (2016a). They make a number of points that appear to be of central relevance to EAL learning and teaching. They found quite a number of aspects of the new curriculum to commend, but their overall judgement is that it is ‘a thing of mixed quality’ (UKLA, 2016a, p.20). They put forward a number of trenchant points of critique including its conceptualisation of the sequence in which language learning takes place: ‘the government has made the mistake of imagining that prior analytical instruction in the primary years will produce 11-year-olds who can read fluently and accurately, write correctly, and use correct grammar in their speech and writing (UKLA, 2016a, p.3). They go on to observe that:

… we are not saying that it is impossible to analyse the activities of reading, writing and the use of grammar in order more clearly to understand how they work. Professionals working in these areas should be able to do these things. The simple principle here is that competence is prior (both in the chronological and intellectual sense) to analysis, not the other way round.

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We will return later in the report to the question of what knowledge about language teachers, as opposed to pupils, require if they are to support EAL learners in an effective fashion (see Chapter 6). Staying at the moment on the topic of communicative competence in relation to EAL, Leung (2014, p. 124) has argued that ‘a “follow-the-rules” view of communicative competence can only provide partial purchase on what it takes to achieve communication’. He highlights on the basis of empirical data from multilingual classrooms in London that ‘the importance of “knowledge” has to be understood alongside the importance of participatory involvement on the part of all the interlocutors’ (2014, p.141). Communicative competence in his view needs to be seen as comprised of language knowledge and participatory involvement (2014, p.142). He also reminds us that ‘students from diverse backgrounds can call upon their additional multilingual and multilingual resources to achieve communication and to further their learning.’ (2014, p.143). The topic of how teachers can be assisted to foster the participatory involvement of EAL learners is pursued in subsequent chapters of the report. Turning to other areas of concern in the National Curriculum for English raised by CLPE, NAAE, NATE and UKLA, they identify an ‘obsession with synthetic phonics’ (UKLA, 2016a, p.4) as a key problem in early reading. They are at pains to point out that they are ‘not in any crude sense ‘anti-phonics’ ‘ (UKLA, 2016a, p.4), but point up the distinct limitations of an approach to early reading that is very much centred around one method to the exclusion of others. This view is supported by a wide range of research, much of it drawn together in an authoritative systematic review by Torgerson et al. (2006), which informed the Rose Review (DfES, 2006). This government report first raised the idea of the ‘simple view of reading’ (p.70) and recommended the introduction of Systematic Synthetic Phonics for ‘most children’ by the age of five (p. 77). The Torgerson review, however, has as one of its conclusions that evidence for the effect of systematic phonics instruction on comprehension is very weak – a point taken up in the following paragraph in relation to EAL learners. It is also important to remember that prescribing only one method may not suit all learners, given the diversity of experiences they bring to the task. The use of phonic methods in the teaching of early reading to EAL learners also needs to take account of the fact that ‘each language has an inventory of phonemes that may differ from that of other languages’ and that ‘contrasting phonemic patterns across languages and dialects can have an impact on what words children understand, how they pronounce words, and also how they might be inclined to spell them’ (Fillmore and Snow, 2000, p.14). Literacy research with multilingual learners over the past few years has benefited a great deal from the ‘many pathways’ model developed by Gregory and her associates (Gregory et al. 2004, Gregory, 2005, 2008). Gregory argues for an understanding of learning, and particularly literacy learning, as ‘syncretic’, (2005, p. 225) where young learners ‘transform the languages and cultures they use to create new forms relevant to the purposes needed’ (2005, p. 225). This resonates with the model of literacy teaching promoted by UKLA, where readers are ‘encouraged to bring the whole range of their intellectual faculties to bear on the text in order to derive meaning from it’ (UKLA, 2016a, p.5). Gregory (2008) provides many illuminating qualitative accounts of young multilingual learners learning to read, including Saida, a young child recently arrived from Bangladesh. Saida could accurately decode words in an English reading scheme book, but did not comprehend what she had ‘read’ (p. 123). She could decode the Arabic she was learning in the mosque in the

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same way. Her mainstream teacher had the knowledge to understand what was happening and the imagination to think of ways to use her pupil’s knowledge of the sounds of the letters as a resource to lead her into reading for meaning. Gregory concludes that knowledge of sound/symbol association in any language provides the young multilingual learner with an initial advantage, but that the move to meaningful engagement with text needs to be quickly made in order to develop the learner’s comprehension and capacity to become an independent reader. CLPE, NAAE, NATE and UKLA also criticise the National Curriculum for its failure to give sufficient attention to digital media and to media education. Extending their critique, it appears to us that the National Curriculum has a limited sense of what constitutes a text and that a much more expansive definition of texts is required in a 21st century world. This is an important consideration for EAL learners who can gain from interacting with multimodal texts and can be encouraged to produce, by hand or digitally, texts that draw on more than one language and may include images and symbols. In addition, CLPE, NAAE, NATE and UKLA note the ‘regrettable absence’ of ‘knowledge about language’ (NATE, 2016a, p.17) in the National Curriculum for English and clearly recognise that ‘the teaching of grammar sits best within the overall study of language as a phenomenon’ (NATE, 2016a, p.17). Their own reworking of the National Curriculum, An Alternative Curriculum for English 3 to 16 (UKLA, 2016b), does set out to provide a ‘progressive programme of study for knowledge about language’ (UKLA, 2016a, p.17), with sections detailing the knowledge about language that pupils should acquire at key stages 2, 3 and 4. Matters that are listed here include: attention to ‘some aspects of variety in contemporary English, for example, the use of different accents, dialects and word usages’; comparisons of spoken and written language; ‘the spread of ‘Englishes’ across the world’; ‘differences between the standard forms of different countries’, etc. (UKLA, 2016b, pp.22-23.) While not directly employing the term critical literacy, this Alternative Curriculum does propose that: ‘Students study some of the connections between language and power, whether in interpersonal or mass uses of language’ (UKLA 2016b, p.23). Making LPE, NAAE, NATE and UKLA’s critique of the National Curriculum’s failure to take a sufficiently expansive view of knowledge about language more specific to EAL learning and teaching, we see the concentration in the National Curriculum on teaching ‘grammar’ as presenting the danger that the focus of initial teachers’ knowledge of language will be narrowed. In particular, it may take attention away from the pragmatics of communication and how these vary across cultures; from attention to the interconnections between language and culture; and from a recognition of how language and identity are inextricably intertwined. Assisting EAL learners to understand the grammar of English will be enabled if teachers have at least a basic knowledge of how structures and forms vary across languages. In other words, a strong argument can be made that in contemporary multilingual classrooms teachers’ knowledge about language is not wholly confined to the English language. This is a theme that we will pursue later in this report.

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Initial Teacher Education in England – The Current Situation ITE in England has undergone huge changes over recent years. The current trend is towards school-based training with HE institutions increasingly taking a monitoring and accrediting role, and not working as directly with trainees. This is made clear by the stated priorities for 2016-2017 articulated by the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL, 2015), the government-sponsored executive agency which oversees training6. The third priority is to:

… support schools to take control of their own recruitment and training of teachers, through School Direct, and support the development of new school-centred initial teacher training (SCITT) provision while encouraging higher education providers to work in partnership with schools further to improve their programmes of training (2015, unpaginated).

The most recent government-initiated review of ITE (Carter, 2015) reveals the complexity of the current situation. It reports the numbers of ITE trainees recruited for the 2014-2015 academic year, showing that about two thirds of trainees were still recruited onto the ‘traditional’ HE provider-led routes of PGCE and BA QTS but the school-led routes of School Direct and Teach First were becoming increasingly significant (pp.18-19). Like the NCTL, Carter (p. 3) noted the move to a school-led ITE system, though with a recognition of the importance of university involvement:

Sometimes universities will take the lead, sometimes and increasingly, it will be the schools that lead the way. However, neither can do it alone and our review has made recommendations that emphasise the strength of working together within a system that is increasingly school led.

This shift from HE to school has important implications for the kinds of materials and resources that will be needed to meet the CPD needs of ITE providers in the future. There is only a small reference to EAL in the Carter Review, following a response to the call for evidence made by the Bell Foundation and Unbound Philanthropy which the authors of this report also contributed to. There is one useful, short case study from Sheffield Hallam University describing ‘National Priority Placements’ focusing on EAL (Carter, 2015, p.39). Apart from this, the recommendations of the review are generic, but do allow for the integration of EAL issues into a curriculum for ITE by those providers who are prepared to consider the implications for their courses. The Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2011), mentioned above, do, on the other hand, make explicit reference to EAL pupils, albeit briefly. As part of Standard 5, within the requirement to ‘adapt teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils’, it is stated that all teachers should:

… have a clear understanding of the needs of all pupils, including those with special educational needs; those of high ability; those with English as an additional

6 At the beginning of April 2018, the NCTL was replaced by the Department for Education Teaching Regulation Agency. Information about NCTL materials can be found at: https://nationalcollege.org.uk

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language; those with disabilities; and be able to use and evaluate distinctive teaching approaches to engage and support them (pp. 11-12).

Conclusion This chapter has provided a contextual overview of the situation in education in England in relation to EAL. To conclude, we sum up the key issues that have emerged, which have attinformedthe empirical research that underpins the project:

EAL is an emergent, complex and fluid region of Second Language Education and understandings about its status and pedagogies are very diverse.

Funding for EAL for both mainstream schools and ITE providers is unstable and subject to change.

There are debates about the ways in which the subject English and specifically literacy is constructed in the National Curriculum, which have important implications for EAL learners.

ITE in England is undergoing radical changes, which will have significant bearing on provision for EAL for current and future trainees.

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Chapter 3: Method Research Aims and organisation of the chapter The introduction to this report has set out the general aims of this study:

to investigate to what extent initial teacher education programmes in England are preparing student teachers to meet the language and literacy needs of EAL learners, and;

to design resources to extend the knowledge base of teacher educators and student teachers in relation to meeting these needs.

This chapter describes how these aims were operationalised, starting with an overview of the research design, followed by a sketch of the sites where the study took place. The focus then shifts to the content of the two student surveys, the procedures employed to implement the surveys and the number of the respondents to the two surveys. The content, character and numbers involved in focus groups and individual interviews are then described, followed by accounts of the analysis of data and the development and piloting of resources. Issues concerning generalisability and ethics are also examined. Overview of the Research Design This study has built on preceding research into the preparation of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) student teachers to teach English as an Additional Language (EAL) pupils in mainstream schools (e.g. Anderson et al., 2016b; Foley et al., 2012; Andrews, 2009). It employed a mixed-methods design that involved the following main elements:

Two online surveys, which generated both quantitative and qualitative data were developed for student teachers. These surveys were administered at the project’s two principal research sites and at a further seven sites throughout England.

Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with teacher educators and student teachers at the two principal research sites.

Informed by the data collected in the project, resources concerning EAL were designed by the research team.

These resources were then piloted, first in the two principal research sites and then at a further three sites. Feedback was sought from participants in these piloting sessions and recorded to inform the further development of the resources.

Research Sites The principal research sites in this study (Site 1 and Site 2) were located in widely separated areas of England. These primary sites were selected because their ITE programmes were similar in size and both attracted students from a wide range of subject specialist backgrounds. In addition, both universities have a long history in the preparation of student

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teachers and provided or had partnerships with a variety of routes to teacher qualification, such as Teach First and School Direct. The population for the two online questionnaires comprised student teachers at the two principal research sites and seven other ITE sites across England. It included students completing various routes into teacher qualification including PGCE, Teach First, and School Direct. These nine sites were chosen to encompass different English regions, ranging from the North-East to the South-West. It was viewed as important to achieve this geographical spread in the surveys, given that EAL pupils are not distributed evenly over the country as a whole. The sites included Russell group universities, post-1992 universities and a Teaching Foundation. Surveys Student Survey Questionnaire 1 (SQ1) The design of the student surveys in this project was informed by our preceding work surveying students in two Scottish university Schools of Education on EAL-related matters (Anderson, et al., 2016b). The first survey gathered information on a range of topics relevant to the project’s aims through a set of questions which is summarised in the following box.

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Box 3.1: Question set for the first student survey.

As a research objective in itself and to set a context for the interpretation of survey findings, the students were first asked to respond to a number of questions on their backgrounds:

- If they were a primary or secondary student teacher; the age range, any

specialisms or subject areas; their institution and ITE programme; - Information on gender, age, work experience and qualifications; - If they spoke a language other than English; any prior learning of another

language, whether they had been an EAL/ESL learner; - If they had informal/more formal experience of teaching EAL learners; any

formal qualifications for teaching English as a foreign language; any prior teaching experience.

They were asked how confident they felt at this stage in their ITE programme in their ability to support EAL learners. Students were asked to respond to a series of statements probing their views on how language is best acquired and how teachers may best respond to EAL learners indicating their level of agreement/disagreement with these statements using a five-point scale, (strongly agree/agree/unsure/disagree/strongly disagree).

They were asked to give (using a five-point scale of very large responsibility/ large responsibility/ some responsibility/ little responsibility/no responsibility) their views on the extent to which educators occupying different roles are responsible for meeting the needs of EAL learners.

Students were asked if they had received any input during the institution-based part of their course related to working with EAL/bilingual learners, and if so to provide further details. This was followed by a set of questions on the level of importance of having EAL-related input on key, language-related aspects of learning, teaching and assessment for their future careers.

They were then asked if they had received any specific training while working, or on placement, in schools in relation to meeting the language and literacy needs of EAL pupils, and if so to briefly describe this.

Finally, students were invited to provide additional comments about how ITE programmes could better prepare them to face the challenges of meeting the language and literacy needs of pupils with EAL.

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Procedure The first online questionnaire for student teachers was launched and circulated across nine ITE sites at roughly the midway-point of their ITE programme. The survey link was sent to programme directors at each of the nine sites to be distributed to their students. To ensure that anonymity was maintained, but to allow us to match up responses from this survey to the second survey, participants were asked to create a unique identifier that included one letter and six numbers. For ease of memory, we suggested that the participants could use their birth date preceded by the first letter of their surname. As the following section on the second survey will reveal, this means of matching up individual responses to the first and second surveys did not work out as well as anticipated. Student Survey Questionnaire 2 (SQ2) Towards the end of their ITE programme, student teachers were asked to complete a second survey questionnaire. The purpose of the questionnaire was to gather further responses from students at this stage in their training, and to allow us to determine whether, and to what extent, the full ITE programme and any input on EAL received during the programme had developed their understanding of how to support EAL learners in general and in their own subject specialist areas. The second online survey was again circulated to each of the nine participant institutions. The survey began by asking students if they had completed the first survey and, if they had done so, to enter their unique identifiers. If they had not completed the first survey, or had forgotten their identifiers, they were asked to complete the same series of background questions that featured in SQ1. Attention then turned to any EAL-related support or input that the students had received during their course. The question set for the second survey is summarised in Box 3.2.

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Box 3.2: Question set for the second student survey.

Students were asked to supply the following information:

As in SQ1, students were asked if they had received any input during the institution-based part of their course directly related to working with EAL/bilingual learners. They were also asked if they had received any school-based training in relation to EAL, and if so were asked to provide brief details of this input/training. Students were asked to rate, (using a three-point scale of very little understanding/some increase in understanding/considerable increase in understanding), the extent to which any input they had received had given them a better understanding of the needs of EAL learners. They were then asked to rate the extent to which they had been able to develop extra strategies, ideas and resources for responding effectively to EAL learners.

Students were invited to highlight: any particular type of input that they found particularly helpful; any matters that were not covered or that needed to be addressed in greater depth; matters that they perceived as key in learning how to meet the language and literacy needs of EAL pupils; any strategies or ideas that they would put into practice in the classroom. Questions from SQ1 were repeated including a rating of their confidence in supporting EAL learners, and views on how language is best acquired. Students were asked to give their views on the extent to which educators are responsible for meeting the needs of EAL learners, and invited to provide any additional comments and/or more general reflections on EAL-related matters.

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Number of respondents to the surveys Figure 3.1: Number of respondents to each survey, numbers who answered both surveys, numbers in the second survey who remembered their unique identifier.

A total of 182 student teachers responded to SQ1, which can be viewed as a very acceptable sample size. However, the same cannot be claimed for the second survey. A total of 54 responses were received for SQ2, of which 34 responded to both questionnaires and 19 responded to both and remembered their unique identifier. This disappointing response rate appeared to be due to several factors, one of which was the timing of the launch towards the end of the academic year. The intention was to allow student teachers to consider any EAL input, support or learning across their ITE programme, however the timing of the launch also coincided with their final exams and projects and so many may not have had the time available to complete the survey. The implications for data analysis of the lower than anticipated responses to the second survey and the fact that only a limited number of responses to each survey could be directly matched up will be discussed in a following section. Focus Groups and Interviews Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted at the two primary research sites with both teacher educators and student teachers. The interviews were highly interactive in their form with a focus on generating open discussion with participants on key topics. The interviews were conducted in two stages: first at the mid-point of the academic year and then towards the end of the academic year, with an intervention session delivered in-between. The second interviews allowed the project team to follow up on initial discussions and explore with the student teachers their experience in relation to EAL pupils during their time spent in schools. In addition, feedback was invited from the tutors and students on the intervention sessions, which included the initial versions of resources developed by the project team.

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34

54

182

0 50 100 150 200

Both and remembered UI

Both Questionnaires

Second Questionnaire

First Questionnaire

Number of respondents

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The topics for teacher educator focus groups and interviews included:

• Information on their background in education and initial teacher education, their knowledge of EAL issues and experience of teaching EAL pupils, and any CPD opportunities available to them;

• Links with partnership schools and whether their ITE programme has an overall strategy that supports student teachers to meet the needs of EAL pupils;

• The challenges for teacher educators in preparing students to teach EAL pupils; • The challenges associated with developing language and literacy, for all school pupils

and for EAL pupils in particular; • Subject specific issues, and any aspects of their own practice that they wished to

highlight; • Suggestions for tools, resources, CPD; and in the second phase of interviews

comments and feedback on the intervention session and any other input on EAL received during the ITE programme.

Topics for student teacher focus groups and interviews included:

• Information on background, ITE programme, and any experience teaching EAL or as an EAL learner;

• Views on their ITE programme, how it addressed EAL issues and any provision, input, provided to support the teaching of EAL pupils;

• Experiences of teaching EAL pupils in schools, thoughts on school placement and confidence in ability to meet the language and literacy needs of EAL pupils;

• Perceptions of challenges for EAL pupils, and for all school pupils, in developing language and literacy skills;

• Any subject specific issues in relation to EAL or developing language and literacy; • Thoughts on the role of teachers and school practice in relation to meeting the

needs of EAL pupils; • In the second set of interviews, comments and feedback were invited on any

intervention session that they had received in relation to EAL. Focus groups and interviews: sample The sample for focus groups and interviews comprised 16 teacher educators and 17 student teachers spread across the two primary sites. Both primary and secondary PGCE students were interviewed, as well as Teach First and School Direct participants. Student teachers on PGCE secondary programmes came with a variety of subject specialisms, including English, Maths, Physics, and Physical Education. Likewise, the teacher educators came with a range of subject specialisms and roles, including a Science and English tutor, PGCE Leaders, Partnership Manager, School Direct Lead and Lead for Teach First. A similar, but not altogether identical, sample of teacher educators was interviewed in the phase of the initial piloting of resources.

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Table 3.1a: Interview and Focus Group Participants: Site 1.

Teacher Educators 9

Student Teachers (Secondary) 7

ITable 3.1a: Interview and Focus Group Participants: Site 2.

Teacher Educators 7

Student Teachers (Primary) 8

Student Teachers (Secondary) 2

Analysis of data A preceding section has set out the disparity in the number of responses to the two student surveys and that responses to the first and second surveys could only be matched up for a small sub-set of respondents. These circumstances somewhat thwarted our intention at the design stage to give a very close-grained analysis of similarities and differences across the two data sets, using inferential statistics where apposite. However, it has still been possible, (within the constraints that we have outlined), to conduct a close analysis of the data within each survey and to present comparisons between the two surveys where they were clearly appropriate and justifiable. The analysis of qualitative data followed closely the approach that we adopted in our preceding study of ITE and EAL (Anderson, et al., 2016b). As in that preceding project, our aim in this study has been to centre on representing the participant tutors’ and students’ understandings of, and views, concerning EAL-related matters. An important first stage involved a close, interactive reading of the qualitative data that gave a secure basis on which to generate inductively what Maxwell (2013: 108) has termed ‘substantive categories’. Such substantive categories ‘are primarily descriptive, in a broad sense that includes description of participants’ concepts and beliefs; they stay close to the data categorized’ (Maxwell, 2013: 108). The robustness of these categories and of interpretations based on them was scrutinised by the research team. A key consideration within the analysis of the qualitative findings was to give due attention to the range of conceptions and opinions that were expressed. Within this report, we have set out not only to indicate what were majority views, but also to represent the range of opinions on an issue and not to overlook ‘outliers’. Based on the data analysis, the project team identified four key themes that would guide the development of the project resources: Conceptualisations of EAL and Professional Responsibilities; Talking and Thinking about Language; Meeting Language and Literacy Needs; Teacher Confidence and Teacher Education.

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The Development and Piloting of Resources One of the key aims of the project was for the research team to design resources and materials, using the overarching principles of an inclusive approach that recognises the intrinsic value of diversity, to extend the knowledge base, conceptions and strategies of teacher educators and student teachers in relation to meeting the language and literacy needs of EAL pupils. Drawing on the findings of the first phase of the research project and relevant literature concerning EAL and initial teacher education, the project team developed initial drafts of the resources for piloting based primarily on themes 1 (Conceptualisations of EAL) and 2 (Talking and Thinking about Language) but drawing on aspects of each of the four themes. Materials trialled in these sessions comprised presentations, exercises, extracts from data highlighting particular issues regarding EAL, and, as stated above, were underpinned by literature related to EAL and ITE. In devising the materials, the research team was also alert to the policy context, including the National Curriculum and the requirements the Curriculum makes concerning knowledge about language. The resources encouraged participants to consider and discuss concepts of EAL and language, literacies and communication, with some language tasks aimed at highlighting the challenges and barriers faced by EAL pupils in the classroom. Piloting of these draft resources was conducted by the research project team with teacher educators at sites 1 and 2, and then extended to three other sites. Teacher educators were asked to provide verbal feedback and comments on the resources and these were recorded to guide further development of the materials. Recorded feedback was transcribed and analysed and fed into the on-going development and refinement of the materials, with the aim that the final resources would to a certain degree be co-produced by the research project team and project participants. It was also intended that the resources would be trialled by the teacher educators with student teachers at each of the pilot sites. At one site the resources were presented to student teachers directly by members of the project team as another form of piloting. At the time of writing the final versions of the resources are being developed and are due to be published from late 2018 onwards. Generalisability From the outset we took care to ensure that we did not generalise our findings inappropriately. However, we would suggest that the views, concerns, issues and challenges reported by our participants are likely to be similar to those encountered by students and staff in other universities, that they may possess some degree of generality. Indeed, there are similarities between the findings from this project and those from previous research projects conducted by the project team in this area, for example Anderson et al. (2016b) which focused on two ITE programmes at universities in Scotland. That research in this area continues to raise familiar issues and challenges with regards to UK teacher education programmes and EAL suggests that the resources developed as part of the current project, in collaboration with ITE providers, are both timely and necessary.

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Ethical Issues Ethical approval was sought and given by the Ethics Committees in both universities used as primary research sites, and data collection and reporting followed closely the guidelines published by the British Educational Research Association (BERA). Permission to undertake the research was sought from programme directors at each site, who were also given information sheets and consent forms. Separate forms were prepared for students and for staff informants, and these were distributed before the interviews and focus groups. Both sets of informants were assured that should they wish any additional information this would be provided. Assurances were given that when reporting the research it would not be possible to identify either individuals or institutions and that at all times confidentiality and anonymity would be assured. For the survey, students were not asked to sign paper copies of consent forms. It was considered that having read the information sheets and the assurances given at the beginning of the survey, the decision to participate would be taken as informed consent. We have set out earlier the careful steps we took to ensure that anonymity was maintained in any matching of students’ responses to the first questionnaires with their responses to the second questionnaires. As researchers, our own conceptualisation and action in relation to research ethics was not confined to these matters of gaining informed consent and ensuring anonymity. Consonant with a ‘virtue ethics’ approach (Macfarlane, 2009), we recognised the need for a continuing close attentiveness and responsiveness to the participants in our research. We regarded it as important ‘to move attention away from the idea of research ethics as a neatly delineated sphere of issues and concerns to foreground the relationships between researchers and participants and the qualities that the researcher can be expected to exhibit in such relationships’ (Anderson and Sangster, 2010, p.130).

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Chapter 4: Background of the Student Respondents The Introduction to this report has flagged up the linguistic and cultural diversity of the current school population in England. The question arises of the extent to which student teachers mirror this increasing diversity. What knowledge of languages do they possess? Have they experienced any crossing of national boundaries in their own education? Are they bringing life and work experience that is pertinent to working with EAL pupils? Addressing these questions was seen as an important research objective in the current project: as a valuable end in itself; as providing a context against which to interpret the survey findings; and as providing information to inform the design of resources. This background information also informed the design of the resources linked to the project outcomes. The following sub-sections provide an overview of the background of the respondents to the surveys. Given that there were only 20 respondents to the second survey who had not responded to the first survey, attention is focused on giving a detailed description of responses to the background questions in the first survey. Gender Looking first at gender, out of the 178 respondents to the question asking them to state their gender, 153 (86%) were female and 25 (14%) male. These figures need to be viewed against the ratio of women to men in the teacher workforce in England where in November 2016 ‘almost three out of four school teachers are female and four out of five school employees are female.’ (DfE, 2017d, p.7). Primary/ Secondary and subject specialisms There was a fairly even division between primary and secondary student teachers in the first survey. The question ‘please indicate whether you are a Primary or Secondary student teacher’ revealed that 95 (52.2%) were enrolled on a Primary programme and 87 (47.8%) on a Secondary programme. Primary subject specialisms Primary student teachers were asked to ‘indicate if you have a specialism.’ 12 out of the 77 responses to this question simply stated ‘no’ or’ N/A’. Of the 65 positive responses: 17 students stated that their specialism was ‘English’; two others English and Early Years; and one ‘MFL [Modern Foreign languages] /English’. It would be appropriate to expect these students to be equipped by their programmes not only to develop pupils’ communication in English across the different language modes but also to share knowledge about how to foster literacies in the English language with future colleagues. A much smaller number, 5, (including the “MFL/English’ response), said that they were specialising in a language, (1 French, 1 Spanish), or languages.

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6 indicated that they were specialising in ‘Early Years’ and 5 others in Early Years and a specific subject, (e.g. humanities/early years’, ‘early years science’). 9 were focusing on Maths, 5 on Science and 4 on Computing. 5 were enrolled in the area of ‘SEN’, 2 in ‘Inclusion’ and 1 in an ‘international specialism’. Only two students were concentrating on PE, with 2 also concentrating on ‘History and Geography’, 1 in History, and 1 in Humanities. Secondary subject specialisms 82 of the 87 secondary student teachers gave a positive response to the question asking them to state their subject area(s). 28 of the 82, i.e. almost exactly a third, were studying to be English teachers. The observation made in the preceding paragraph concerning primary school teachers specialising in English applies with equal force here. 11 were going to be teaching Modern Foreign Languages, and one History and French. 13 were aiming to teach a Science subject; 11 Maths; and 5 Psychology. There were only 3 individuals enrolled in PE as a subject and a similar number in Geography. Two individuals were going to teach Latin with Classics; and Art, History, RE, Music and Social Science featured one student each. Location of primary and secondary education To gain some sense of the extent to which respondents had experienced the crossing of national boundaries within their own educational experience, they were asked ‘if your primary or secondary education was outside the UK please tick any of the areas below that are applicable’, with the continents as response categories. 24, (13.2%) of the total sample, stated that they had been educated outside the UK, with the figures breaking down as follows: 2 (1.1%) Africa, 4 (2.2%) Asia, 16 (8.8%) Europe, 2 (1.1%) South America. Age distribution The age distribution of the respondents to the first survey was: Figure 4.1: Age distribution.

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It will be seen from Figure 4.1 that just under a third of respondents were aged thirty-five or over and therefore would be bringing considerable work experience to their role in the classroom. Previous work experience It seemed germane to explore in the first survey whether or not respondents were bringing life and work experience that was pertinent to working with EAL learners. Accordingly, a question asked them to ‘indicate your prior work experience’. Responses to this question sometimes flagged up voluntary activities as well as preceding jobs and professional roles. 36 of the 171 respondents to this question indicated that they had occupied a Teaching Assistant role, sometimes for a considerable period of time, (‘10 years TA/HLTA in a multi-cultural Junior School’); while others indicated that they had undertaken voluntary work in a support role in schools. Fifteen stated that they had previously been engaged in teaching English language in some capacity or other. For example: ‘CELTA qualified English teacher’; ‘English language assistant in Germany’; ‘ESOL tutor and programme manager’; ‘Teaching English as a foreign language in Iran and Italy’; ‘EAL specific work in a Nursery’. Preceding experience of teaching EAL learners A following question asked directly: ‘have you had any informal, or more formal, experience of teaching (in English) learners for whom English is not their first language?’ A third, 49, of the replies to this question indicated that they had had no experience of this kind. It was clear from the descriptions given in another 24 responses that experience of teaching EAL learners had only been gained on placement and therefore half of the respondents could be clearly identified as having had no teaching role in relation to EAL learners prior to commencing their training. 35 simply stated that ‘YES’ they had had such experience. (For these ‘YES’ responses, one cannot be confident that they are necessarily referring to a period prior to teacher training.) The remaining responses did provide some detail on the nature of their teaching in relation to EAL; and it was possible to group the bulk of these responses into a number of categories. 11 indicated that they had had a teaching role outside of the UK, (e.g., ‘English teacher in Sierra Leone’); 8 in the role of a teacher or teaching assistant; 6 as a volunteer, or through informal contact, outside the UK; and 7 as volunteers in the UK. A few responses pointed up communications within the family: ‘Speaking to my baby sisters (Mongolian mother, English father)’. A few cautionary notes need to be sounded concerning the interpretation of this set of findings. We have observed that one needs to be cautious about what a ‘YES’ response may mean, and the extent of the experience gained by some of the respondents in a volunteering role may possibly in some cases have been quite limited and the approaches employed may not have been in line with current thinking in the field of EAL. Even when these caveats are taken into account, this set of findings appears to contain a clear message for the design of programmes concerning EAL in ITE in that they need to accommodate the fact that participants will be coming with markedly contrasting levels of prior interaction with EAL

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learners. We will return to this question of disparity in amount of contact with EAL learners when we report later on the distinct variability across placements in the number of EAL learners. Respondents as EAL learners Such a programme also needs to take account of the fact that a number of trainee teachers will themselves have been EAL learners. A question in the first survey asked ‘If English is not your first language, have you ever been an EAL/ESL learner in the UK or another English-speaking country?’ 16 (8.8%) indicated that they had been or were an EAL/ESL learner. Most of these 16 respondents did not describe the nature of their EAL experience, but two did make short statements that pointed to a distinctly bilingual upbringing in the UK, with one of them stating that ‘I was born in London so learnt Spanish and English simultaneously’. One respondent wrote of being an EAL/ESL learner ‘at this very moment in the University.’ This observation can be seen to highlight the question of how well ITE programmes respond to participants who themselves happen to be EAL learners. Formal qualifications for teaching English language The survey revealed that almost a tenth of respondents had gained an academic qualification in teaching English language. There were 17 (9.3%) positive responses to the question ‘Do you have any formal qualifications for teaching English as a foreign language (e.g. CELTA/DELTA?)’. Five indicated that they had a CELTA qualification, one CELTA and DELTA. Eight indicated that they had a ‘TEFL’ qualification, (e.g. ‘150 hour Advanced Online TEFL course’), and one an “EAL certificate’. One respondent had graduated with a BA Hons (Minor) English Language Teaching’ and another simply stated ‘Yes, from University.’ Although not possessing qualifications that focus on the needs of EAL pupils, this group of respondents could be expected to contribute knowledge about language and language learning to the schools where they work. Other languages It appeared important to investigate the extent to which this group of trainee teachers who were likely to be working in multilingual classrooms perceived themselves as capable of speaking another language. Accordingly, respondents were asked ‘Do you speak a language other than English? If so, what language(s) do you speak?’ It needs to be acknowledged that respondents encountering this question may have varied in the standards that they felt needed to be achieved to qualify as a ‘speaker’ of another language. There were 125 responses to this question, but of these 55 replied ‘No’ or ‘N/A’, and one ‘none fluently’. Thus there were 69 positive replies, 55.2%, to this statement, (37.9% of the total sample). Looking first at respondents who identified that they spoke a single language other than English, the most commonly occurring response, 9, was French, (with a few individuals inserting qualifications: ‘French but not fluent’, ‘Basic French’), followed by Spanish at 5, and German at 3. Two stated that they spoke Bengali, two Punjabi, and two Welsh. The following

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list of languages had only one speaker each: Afrikaans, Arabic, British Sign Language, Greek, Gujarati, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Pashto, (Basic) Polish, Romanian, Turkish, Urdu. Looking at pairs of languages, 6 respondents identified themselves as having French and German, and 6 as having French and Spanish. Two described themselves as speaking Spanish and Catalan. The following combinations of languages other than English had one speaker each, with French often being one of the two languages: French and Italian; Albanian, Italian; some Japanese and Korean; Sinhalese, Tamil; French and Punjabi; Italian and Spanish; French and Russian; French and Krio; Dutch and French; French (not fluent) and Brazilian Portuguese (not fluent); Urdu and Arabic. The following six respondents indicated that they spoke three or more languages: Farsi, Italian and Arabic; German, some Portuguese, some Dutch; French, German, some Spanish; Cebuano, Tagalog and basic Spanish; Spanish, Italian and Portuguese; Slovak, Czech, English, German, Spanish. Some notes of caution have been sounded concerning how respondents may have interpreted this question. Even when this caveat is taken into account, it is a striking finding that only 37.9% of the total sample noted that they spoke a language or languages in addition to English. The majority of respondents therefore would not appear themselves to be able to participate directly in translanguaging practices. The languages that were spoken were largely those of Western European countries, with only a small number speaking Slavic languages. Given the location of the respondents’ primary and secondary education, it is not surprising that Middle-Eastern, Asian and African languages were scarcely represented in responses to this question.

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Chapter 5: Conceptualisations of EAL and of Professional Responsibilities Previous research with teachers has begun to indicate the ways in which their professional identities influence their professional roles and their perceptions of their students (Varghese et al., 2005; Hobson et al. 2009; Cajkler and Hall, 2012a). Accordingly, we recognised that it was important to gain an insight into the experiences and knowledge that participants in this research study, both tutors and students, brought to their work. We argue that these experiences feed into their perceptions of what is involved in the ‘region’ of EAL and that it is important to delineate these perceptions. In the case of EAL, research is beginning to show that the construction of professional identity is linked to the professional and personal experiences of multilingualism and cultural diversity that teachers bring to their work (e.g. Pavlenko and Blackledge, 2004; Miller, 2010). There is also some emerging evidence that teachers who have such experience are more able to appreciate the positive potential of multilingualism in their classrooms and to provide affordances for learning for their pupils from diverse backgrounds (Martin-Jones and Saxena, 2003; Conteh et al., 2014). At the same time, there is evidence that professionals feel constrained by the system in opening out such potential (Conteh et al, 2014; Foley, 2013; Anderson et al, 2016b). This chapter presents the overarching constructions of EAL of the teacher educators in our study and of the student respondents’ conceptions of professional responsibilities in relation to EAL. We look first at teacher educators’ views on the definition of ‘EAL’, then move to consider their expectations concerning requisite knowledge about language and language diversity, followed by their thoughts on distinguishing between EAL and Special Educational Needs (SEN). The second part of the chapter examines first the teacher educators’ and then the student teachers’ beliefs concerning professional roles and responsibilities in relation to EAL. Defining ‘EAL’: Teacher educators’ conceptions Heterogeneity Among tutors, there was clearly good awareness of the diversity of pupils who came under the umbrella of EAL. The following two comments, taken from focus group interviews with teacher educators indicate this:

I think you made an interesting distinction as well earlier in that clearly there's a, you know, EAL pupils, or pupils perceived as having English as an additional language are far from a uniform bunch.

The second extract shows an understanding of the importance of knowing something of the background and prior language knowledge of new arrivals in school, and gives a sense of the complexity of this:

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… And there's definitely a difference between somebody whose main languages at home is probably not English but they've spoken English ever since a very early age in school with their peers, and so on, and then recent arrivals, some of whom … have almost not got a single word of English when they arrive in the classroom, and clearly they've got very different needs.

A teacher educator in Site 2 talked at length about the breadth of reference of the category of EAL, which he felt was something that many student teachers were not aware of:

I think a lot of the students… you get a sense and a feeling that they are looking for diversity for EAL, for very specific children. So, the Polish children for instance don’t get counted in that. The children whose English is very, very good and got a Sri Lankan background don’t get included in that, in that same sort of sense… And in some cases the nature of the EAL child within the school whose English is very, very good, but at home it’s not their first language. And I think that almost gets missed by some students sometimes.

Tutors involved in piloting materials in one of the research sites not only recognised this breadth of reference of the term EAL, but also began to question whether having the label ‘EAL’ had a negative influence on teachers’ perceptions of their pupils. In the following quotation one can observe Tutor 1 considering both sides of the argument concerning the value of employing the term in schools:

Tutor 1: So, is the term EAL actually a barrier? Tutor 2: Yes! Tutor 1: You know and would these pupils’ and schools’ perceptions do

better if the term didn’t exist? Does good teaching really cover it all or does good teaching do a pretty good job but unless there's a specific EAL focus it misses certain things?

Requisite knowledge about language and language diversity Our interviews revealed that some tutors were concerned about the lack of knowledge about languages and language diversity that their students brought to their training. This chimes with Cajkler and Hall’s research (2012b) where they argue for the importance of enhancing the language capabilities of new teachers. A teacher educator in Site 2 commented in her interview both about her students’ lack of knowledge of the local context and of languages more broadly:

And quite often they're quite surprised… where I asked them to predict the numbers of languages which are spoken in X schools, lots of the students

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are completely amazed. The other thing that I would then do is ask them to then predict what the languages are in order of popularity. And that's also very eye-opening that some of the students, their understanding of different languages is quite worrying. So, we have, in the past, I've had students referring to African as a language, or Indian as a language.

The following chapter looks in depth at this topic of the knowledge of language that teachers require if they are to interact responsively and effectively with EAL learners. For the moment, it is important to note that while the teacher educators we interviewed had considerable concerns about student teachers’ knowledge in the area of language, they were not presenting a blanket, deficit view of their linguistic capacities. For example, a teacher educator from one of our primary research sites had noticed the possible positive influence of trainees who themselves were multilingual and had experience of diverse cultures. She suggested that they seemed to have a better understanding of ways to benefit multilingual pupils:

I think that trainees who have English as an additional language themselves are much better placed … they’ve got many more strategies than English as a first language trainees.

This perception has been corroborated in research, such as Cajkler and Hall’s (2012b). However, Safford and Drury (2013) show how multilingual trainees can be prevented from activating their expertise where appropriate both in their training institution and on school placements. Distinguishing between ‘EAL’ and ‘SEN’ The need to understand the ways in which EAL and SEN are different fields, each with their own distinctive features, has been a recurrent theme in the literature over the years (Cummins, 1984). It was a main finding in the large, Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA)-funded research project into the needs of the EAL workforce carried out in England between 2008-2010 (IOE, 2009):

There seems to be a lack of clarity of the distinctions between EAL and SEN with the consequence that there is often no clearly identified criteria for identifying the language needs of pupils. In one school the provision for pupils with EAL was handled by the SENCO who had had SEN training but none in EAL.

This view was echoed by a teacher educator we interviewed, who clearly appreciated the complexity of the issues:

I think it's quite important that EAL isn't just lumped in with diversity and equality, and particularly becomes a little bit too dangerously close to SEN.

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Which, I think, a lot of students I've worked with, and indeed teachers I've worked with, see the two as going in some way hand in hand. So, I think it's, for me it's healthier to see them as two areas.

Another teacher educator suggested that part of the reason for this confusion could be to do with the models of practice that students are exposed to in schools, and she linked this with the lack of ‘definitive’ official guidance for EAL practice. This interview participant made the point that while there might be practice in schools in relation to SEN that could be brought into discussions in university-based training, such examples were generally lacking in relation to EAL, so that discussion could only be hypothetical:

… certainly in input that I've done on EAL I would quite comfortably say this is what schools do in relation to SEN but for EAL this is what schools should do – but you might not see that in all schools. So, having something which was more definitive in the same way that we have frameworks for SEN, it might be useful.

The teacher educators’ observations that have been presented in the preceding paragraphs can be read as pointing up the need for greater conceptual clarity in discussion, within teacher education and more generally, of the differently located positions of EAL and SEN. In particular, it can be argued that there is a need to distinguish between the different matters of:

EAL and SEN as distinct fields of practice; and

how individual schools may maintain distinct divisions between, or blur the boundaries of, EAL and SEN provision;

and

the profile of EAL and SEN needs of an individual pupil. Professional roles and responsibilities in relation to EAL: teacher educators’ perceptions The interviews with the teacher educators in our study gave a clear sense that they themselves had taken on board the message that EAL learners were the responsibility of all members of the teaching profession and believed that this message needed to be conveyed to students. The following extract from a focus group illustrates these points. Here the tutors stated that EAL is about ‘permeation’ and should become ‘implicit’ to all practitioners, not just those who may encounter EAL learners in their classrooms:

Tutor 1: Ultimately it’s about effective teaching and learning strategies; and it’s just through the route of EAL that we’re looking at them – they are effective teaching and learning strategies. So, it’s not about oh, well I’ve got no EAL kids this year so I don’t need to.

Int: I don’t need to worry about any of this.

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Tutor 2: Yeah! And it’s that sort of permeation, it should become

implicit to you as an effective practitioner that actually when you face any challenge of a child who is struggling to engage and understand the curriculum for whatever reason this is part

of your suite of strategies. And, you know, it’s like if you’ve had a child with really challenging problems and whatever, and you’ve adapted your teaching, you very often take them because they’ve worked, they’ve worked so your next class you create an environment that anticipates some of those things.

Int: Yes, exactly. Tutor 3: You learn from them so if you like we want our students to

create an EAL-friendly classroom learning environment, regardless of – they might never teach a child who would be identified within the school as a child with EAL. But if they did, if that child did arrive, that learning environment would already be set up.

They also recognised that they themselves were not exempt from these responsibilities. Many teacher educators expressed in different ways a lack of confidence in their own expertise in guiding their students in EAL. This is a theme that we will pursue in depth in a following chapter. At the same time, there was a recognition of the need to move forward on this front. A teacher educator talked at length in a focus group about his own lack of experience, as a mainstream teacher, with EAL learners. He moved on to describing how he had begun as a teacher educator to ‘learn on the job’ by taking opportunities when in school to sit with EAL learners and work out for himself what strategies might help them to access the curriculum:

I think as well one of the things that I don’t know whether everybody would agree with me here, but from my personal experience, if you'd have asked me a relatively short time ago, six or seven years, about strategies I think of using for EAL children in the classroom, I'd have been blank. I didn’t have any. Having been out in schools observing our trainees working with these children, and looking at the situation they're working in with an analytical frame of mind, you sort of start generating your own. In fact, I, I've done lesson observations where there's been groups of children in the classroom – EAL – and purely out of my own personal and professional curiosity I've gone and sat and worked with those children, and tried to help them deal with whatever the content of the lesson was. And I've learnt a lot for myself in that process.

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Professional roles and responsibilities in relation to EAL: students’ perceptions EAL learners: who is responsible? Central questions for the schooling of EAL learners are: where does the responsibility for meeting their needs lie; and to what degree do individual teachers see themselves as having a central role to play in ensuring that their needs are met? It seemed necessary therefore to explore in our surveys where student teachers saw the responsibilities for meeting the needs of EAL learners as being located. Accordingly, they were asked to rate the degree of responsibility that educators occupying different roles have in relation to EAL learners. It is heartening to see that across all the roles set out in Table 5.1 there were very few responses in the categories ‘little responsibility’ and ‘no responsibility’, with no respondents answering in these categories for ‘English teachers’ and for ‘class teachers of subjects other than English’. The findings presented in Table 5.1 show that supporting EAL learners was not in general perceived as being only a matter for EAL specialist services and of English teachers, with 70.2% of respondents in the first survey and 75.9% in the second survey viewing ‘class teachers of subjects other than English’ as having either ‘very large responsibility’ or ‘large responsibility’. This finding and the overall distinctly positive responses to the set of items in Table 5.1 suggest that the expectation that teachers should act to ‘take account of the needs of pupils whose first language is not English’ have been largely taken on board by the respondents to our surveys. As Table 5.1 reveals there was broad similarity in the responses to most of the categories of staff across the two surveys. Exceptions here are the rating of the responsibilities of ITE providers and of classroom assistants. 47.5% of the students in the first survey believed that ITE providers had ‘very large’ or ‘large’ responsibility, as opposed to the 62.9% who answered in these categories in the second survey. This pattern of response in the second survey can be read against students’ comments presented later in the report expressing concerns about their lack of preparation in the area of EAL. The differences in the attribution of responsibility to classroom assistants, (49.7% of participants in the first survey and 68.5% in the second survey answering in the categories ‘very large responsibility’ or ‘large responsibility’), may possibly reflect students’ greater exposure to the important role that classroom assistants often play in assisting EAL learners. There was a certain increase in the second survey in the rating of the responsibilities of SEN teachers and coordinators, (64.1% of participants in the first survey and 74.1% in the second survey answering in the categories ‘very large responsibility’ or ‘large responsibility’).

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Table 5.1: students’ perceptions of the extent to which the following educators are responsible for meeting the needs of EAL learners: ITE providers, EAL specialist services, English teachers, class teachers of subjects other than English, classroom assistants, school management. (First survey in black, second survey in blue).

Response

options

very large responsibility

large responsibility

some responsibility

little responsibility

no responsibility

ITE providers 11.3% (20)

18.5% (10)

36.2% (64)

44.4% (24)

43.5% (77)

33.3% (18)

6.8% (12)

3.7% (2)

2.3% (4)

0% (0)

EAL specialist services

61.1% (107)

57.4% (31)

28.0% (49)

33.3% (18)

10.3% (18)

9.4% (5)

0% (0)

0% (0)

0.6% (1)

0% (0)

English teachers

28.3% (51)

22.2% (12)

53.3% (96)

57.4% (31)

15.0% (27)

20.4% (11)

2.2% (4)

0% (0)

1.1% (2)

0% (0)

Class teachers of subjects other than English

26.4% (47)

22.2% (12)

43.8% (78)

53.7% (29)

24.7% (44)

24.1% (13)

3.9% (7)

0% (0)

1.1% (2)

0% (0)

Classroom assistants

15.1% (27)

14.8% (8)

34.6% (62)

53.7% (29)

40.2% (72)

29.6% (16)

8.9% (16)

1.9% (1)

1.1% (2)

0% (0)

School management

34.4% (62)

37.0% (20)

40.6% (73)

40.7% (22)

19.4% (35)

20.4% (11)

4.4% (8)

1.9% (1)

1.1% (2)

0% (0)

SEN teachers and coordinators

28.2% (51)

35.2% (19)

35.9% (65)

38.9% (21)

23.8% (43)

22.2% (12)

8.8% (16)

3.7% (2)

3.3% (6)

0% (0)

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Chapter 6: Talking and Thinking About Language

This chapter of the report is divided into three main parts. The first part presents a review of students’ ratings in the surveys of the importance of EAL-related input on a range of specific, language-related aspects of learning, teaching and assessment. The second part presents students’ reactions in both surveys to a number of attitudinal statements concerning EAL and language acquisition. In the third part, attention turns to qualitative findings from the project; an account is given of central themes concerning EAL, language and literacy that emerged from the interviews and free-text comments in the surveys. These themes are: learning Englishes; the cognitive demands of moving between languages; vocabulary development: what does it entail? subject specific literacies; and the importance of knowledge about language(s). Ratings of the importance of areas of EAL-related input First survey To gain a detailed sense of what the students themselves viewed as priority areas for their education in EAL, they were asked in the first survey to rate the importance of EAL-related input on the specific aspects of learning, teaching and assessment that are listed in Table 6.1. These questions covered a range of aspects of language learning and literacy development. This set of questions was designed with the purposes of both revealing what student teachers regarded as important matters and of guiding the content of the resources that we were still developing. In relation to the first purpose, it is encouraging to see that only a very small number of respondents regarded these aspects as ‘not important’, with only two or three individuals choosing this response category for many of the questions. This finding, taken in conjunction with the students’ responses on class teachers’ responsibilities for EAL learners, can be interpreted as indicating a lack of resistance to engaging with EAL pupils. The overall pattern of response to the items set out in Table 6.1 also suggests that these students were recognising the importance of developing their knowledge and strategies related to EAL across a broad front. For most of the items listed in table 6.1 a, sometimes large, majority of respondents answered within the categories ‘essential’ and ‘very important’. An exception here is the item on ‘theories of bilingualism/multilingualism’, where only 39.1% answered within these two categories. At the same time though there was a much higher rating of the item ‘specific input on how a second/additional language is learned’, with 59.6% choosing the categories ‘essential’ and ‘very important’. The question on ‘the importance of academic language’ also did not attract as high, though still a substantial, rating, with 43.2% answering in the categories ‘essential’ and ‘very important’. (We recognise that this item could have been phrased in a more precise manner.) High ratings were given to the matters of learning vocabulary and recognising subject-specific language that can be challenging to EAL pupils, along with ‘the development of literacies’ and ‘language across the curriculum’. It is heartening to see that students also gave a high rating to ‘training in cultural/diversity awareness’. The highest rating was given to ‘assessing

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EAL/bilingual learners’, perhaps reflecting students’ concerns about how they would address this in every day practice. Table 6.1: Responses to the question in the first survey: ‘Focusing on your current studies in teacher education, please indicate the degree to which you think it would be important for your future career to have EAL-related input on the following aspects of learning, teaching and assessment.’

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Table 6.1

Response categories

Essential Very important

Important Fairly important

Not important

Specific input on how a second/ additional language is learned

27.8% (49) 31.8% (56) 23.3% (41) 15.9% (28) 1.1% (2)

Recognising the specific language that can cause challenges for pupils learning EAL within your subject area

32.0% (56) 36.0% (63) 25.7% (45) 5.1% (9) 1.1% (2)

The development of literacies

24.6% (43) 36.0% (63) 30.9% (54) 6.8% (12) 1.7% (3)

Learning literacy in a new/additional language

28.2% (49) 33.9% (59) 27.6% (48) 8.6% (15) 1.7% (3)

Language across the curriculum

31.0% (54) 31.6% (55) 27.6% (48) 6.9% (12) 2.9% (5)

Learning vocabulary in a new/additional language

29.4% (52) 32.2% (57) 28.8% (51) 5.6% (10) 3.9% (7)

Learning grammar in a new/additional language

24.1% (42) 31.0% (54) 30.5% (53) 10.9% (19) 3.5% (6)

The importance of academic language

14.8% (26) 28.4% (50) 38.6% (68) 15.3% (27) 2.8% (5)

Theories of bilingualism /multilingualism

20.1% (35) 19.0% (33) 32.2% (56) 24.7% (43) 4.0% (7)

Training in cultural/diversity awareness

35.1% (61) 29.9% (52) 28.2% (49) 5.7% (10) 1.1% (2)

Assessing EAL/ bilingual learners

44.8% (77) 29.1% (50) 22.1% (38) 2.9% (5) 1.1% (2)

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Second survey Moving on to the second survey, a different set of items was deployed here, with a focus on everyday teaching tasks. The key finding would seem to be that all of the items in this set were given high ratings. Combining the categories ‘very useful’ and ‘useful’, the percentage of respondents answering in these two categories, ranged from 82% for ‘providing effective feedback’ to 98.1% for ‘developing EAL learners’ vocabulary’. Very few answers were given in the categories ‘little use’ and ‘not required’. At this later stage of their training, these students were still flagging up the usefulness of ‘general input on learning/teaching an additional language.’ As Table 6.2 shows, the respondents in the second survey were not simply confining their attention to the practicalities of ‘devising resources/materials’ but were also attending to the social integration of EAL learners and to how they could draw ‘appropriately on EAL learners’ own linguistic and cultural background.’ The overall pattern of response revealed in this table can be read as making an argument for providing a wide-ranging education concerning EAL. How this could be achieved to any degree within the tight constraints of very full initial teacher training programmes is a question that we return to in chapter 9. Table 6.2: Responses to the question in the second survey: ‘Thinking particularly of your own subject area, please indicate the degree to which it would be useful for your future career to have EAL-related input on the following aspects of learning, teaching and assessment.’

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Table 6.2

Response categories

Very useful

Useful Some use Little use Not Required

general input on learning/teaching an additional language

55.6% (30) 37.0% (20) 5.6% (3) 1.9% (1) 0% (0)

Recognising language that can cause challenges

51.9% (28) 40.7% (22) 5.6% (3) 1.9% (1) 0% (0)

Devising resources/materials

59.3% (32) 33.3% (18) 3.7% (2) 3.7% (2) 0% (0)

Differentiation of content/activities

63.0% (34) 29.6% (16) 7.4% (4) 0% (0) 0% (0)

Involving EAL learners in group work

63.0% (34) 31.5% (17) 3.7% (2) 1.9% (1) 0% (0)

Involving EAL learners in whole class work

57.4% (31) 33.3% (18) 9.3% (5) 0% (0) 0% (0)

Language for conceptual understanding of your subject(s)

42.6% (23) 50.0% (27) 7.4% (4) 0% (0) 0% (0)

Developing EAL learners’ vocabulary

53.7% (29) 44.4% (24) 1.9% (1) 0% (0) 0% (0)

Drawing appropriately on EAL learners’ own linguistic and cultural background

40.7% (22) 51.9% (28) 7.4% (4) 0% (0) 0% (0)

Creating appropriate assessments

50.0% (27) 37.0% (20) 11.1% (6) 0% (0) 1.9% (1)

Providing effective feedback

55.6% (30) 26.4% (14) 15.1% (8) 0% (0) 1.9% (1)

Involving EAL learners socially in the life of the classroom and school

54.7% (29) 39.6% (21) 5.7% (3) 0% (0) 0% (0)

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Attention now turns to an account of the findings concerning students’ beliefs about how English can best be acquired. How can English best be acquired? A set of questions in both surveys explored students’ beliefs concerning language acquisition and how EAL pupils might best be supported in their learning of English. Looking at the first of these questions, Figure 6.1 displays the pattern of response in the first and second surveys to the statement: ‘English is best acquired by being immersed in an English-speaking environment.’ It will be seen that there was a very large degree of agreement with this statement, with a higher proportion of respondents in the second survey answering in the category ‘strongly agree’, (1st survey 25.3% ‘strongly agree’, ‘agree’, 59.6%; 2nd survey, 42.6% ‘strongly agree’, 48.6% ‘agree’).

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Figure 6.1: English is best acquired by being immersed in an English-speaking environment.

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A different pattern of response can be seen in Figure 6.2 to the statement: ‘English is best acquired by the explicit teaching of the vocabulary and structure of the language.’ Here there was a broadly similar distribution of responses across the two surveys and a distinct division of opinion is evident. In the first survey 49.5% and in the second survey 55.6% of respondents answered in the categories ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’; around a quarter of respondents in both surveys were ‘unsure’, (1st survey, 26.4%; 2nd survey, 25.9%); and a significant number ‘disagreed’ or ‘strongly disagreed’, (1st survey, 24.1%, 2nd survey, 18.6%). One possible reading of this particular set of responses is that it is not in line with the strong advocacy in some of the EAL literature for more explicit teaching of language structures and forms. The belief that EAL learners can acquire English simply ‘ “by osmosis” ‘ (de Jong and Harper, 2005, p.104) through immersion in an English-speaking environment has been challenged vigorously in a considerable number of research studies with de Jong and Harper (2005, p.105), for example, stating that ‘academic language often requires explicit modelling and instructional focus’, and Fillmore and Snow (2000, p.22) arguing that ‘often explicit teaching of language structures and uses is the most effective way to help learners.’ Figure 6.2: English is best acquired by the explicit teaching of the vocabulary and structure of the language.

A more positive view of explicit teaching was, however, evident in responses to the statement: ‘Learners need to be taught explicit strategies for transferring meaning from their first language to their second language.’ This statement gained a largely positive reaction from respondents. Figure 6.3 shows that the majority of students across both surveys agreed with it. 69.5% of respondents in the first survey answered in the categories ‘strongly agree’

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and ‘agree’ and 77.7% in these categories in the second survey. It will be seen that there was a stronger positive reaction to this statement in the second survey, with 29.6% of respondents answering in the category ‘strongly agree’ as opposed to 17.5% in the first survey, and only 14.8% in the second survey, as opposed to 26.6% in the first survey, being unsure. Figure 6.3: Learners need to be taught explicit strategies for transferring meaning from their first language (L1) to their second language (L2).

Figure 6.4 shows a certain shift in opinion between the first and second surveys towards a more positive view of the statement: ‘EAL learners acquire language best through participating in mainstream classes’, with 27.8% in the second survey, as opposed to 13% in the first survey answering in the category ‘strongly agree’. The percentage ‘agreeing’ to this statement was almost identical, (1st survey 50.3%, 2nd survey, 50%), but a smaller proportion of respondents in the second survey were ‘unsure’, (1st survey, 27.7%, 2nd survey, 20.4%), and only one student in the second survey responded in the category ‘disagree’.

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Figure 6.4: EAL learners acquire language best through participating in mainstream classes.

It is interesting to note from Figure 6.5 the variation in opinion and the considerable stability in the pattern of response to the statement: ‘EAL learners acquire English best through being withdrawn from mainstream classes for targeted intervention.’ In both surveys around a third, (30.3% in the 1st survey, 33.3% in the 2nd survey), were ‘unsure’ as to the truth of this statement. Just under half of respondents (45% in the 1st survey, 42.6% in the 2nd survey) ‘disagreed’ or ‘strongly disagreed’ with the statement and a quarter indicated agreement. (24.7% in the first survey and 24.1% in the second survey answered in the categories ‘agree’ and ‘strongly agree’.)

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Figure 6.5: EAL learners acquire English best through being withdrawn from mainstream classes for targeted interventions There is a strong consensus in the EAL literature (e.g. Conteh, 2014; Garcia, 2009; Anderson et al, 2016a) on the value of EAL pupils being able to draw on their own languages in school. The findings presented in Figure 6.6 suggest that this message has only been taken on board to a limited degree by the students within our surveys and show no positive shift in opinion in the time period between the first and second survey. Almost equal proportions of students, (43.8% in the 1st survey and 42.6% in the 2nd survey), answered in the categories ‘agree’ and ‘strongly agree’. A somewhat greater proportion of respondents in the first survey, 42.1% compared to 35.2% in the second survey, were ‘unsure’ as to the truth of this statement; and proportionately more in the second survey actually disagreed with it, 22.2% as opposed to 13.5% in the first survey. This set of findings would seem to indicate a need to convey more forcefully in initial teacher training the message concerning the value of the use of home languages in the classroom.

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Figure 6.6: EAL learners will learn better if they can use their home languages in the classroom

Language and literacy: central themes We now move to consider central themes that have emerged from the analysis of the qualitative data gathered in the project, starting with the topic of learning Englishes. Learning Englishes Observations made by a considerable proportion of staff and student participants revealed that they explicitly, or more implicitly, recognised that EAL pupils faced the task of not simply learning a unitary, discrete body of knowledge about English, but rather needed to master a variety of forms of English and different academic literacies. An appreciation of the variety of forms of English within the UK itself comes through very clearly in the following comment from a member of staff: ‘You could in one sense argue that the vast majority of our students are EAL in the sense that we all speak at least one dialect, at the very least, as well as standard English.’ On the topic of EAL learners needing to understand a local dialect, one lecturer remarked that:

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Well, I was just thinking that because if they’ve [EAL pupils] had some schooling in English in the home counties and then they come to somewhere like the Black Country where it’s not just an accent but it, you know, there’s dialect.

Another staff participant pointed up how certain features of accent and dialect can be narrowly specific to a particular locality: ‘even the variation within the region is enormous, if you go from Dudley to Wolverhampton, Birmingham’s completely different’. One student highlighted the example of an EAL pupil who had wholly assimilated a local dialect, while another student talked about the case of a pupil whom she perceived as not yet speaking the everyday language of his peers.

… when I was at a school in X where one of the girls came in with a really strong Black Country accent … she tried to show a text to the teacher and said in the Black Country dialect, ‘Oh, well, you can’t read it ‘cause it’s in Russian.’ … So she was an EAL child but you wouldn’t have known.

There’s a lad in one of my groups and he’s Indian but has just moved from Italy … He’s got an Indian language, he’s got the Italian and now he’s trying to pick up the English; and he does very well but it is so overly formal. I don’t know what he reads at home ‘cause it’s not how the kids speak. … It’s really, really overly formal.

The difficulties that may arise for EAL pupils when schools set out to ‘police’ the forms of English spoken in the classroom are captured in the following account from a student of an incident in class:

At my school there’s a big issue at the moment of correcting people’s language ‘cause they’re trying to correct this Black Country accent that’s dominating our school … And I had an EAL pupil last week say something like ‘wor’, I can’t even pronounce it to you. But I tried to correct it and he just looked at me … he’s just like completely blank, going straight over his head. And I thought how can I correct his English when that’s what he’s learnt. So like for me to correct him, he’s got to learn something completely new. But it’s our school policy that they’re making us do. It’s confusing matters even more.

The resources that we developed in this project draw attention to features of dialect, a matter that tends not to receive any sustained attention in EAL education programmes. They also involve participants in considering differences between the grammar of spoken and written language. The cognitive demands of moving between languages A number of student and staff participants showed an awareness of the considerable cognitive, and associated emotional, demands that EAL learners may face in moving between their first language(s) and English – a first language that may have very different phonological,

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morphological, syntactic and textual structures from English. On this theme a student respondent to the second questionnaire stated that:

Being able to speak another language has enabled me to empathise with and support EAL student needs: such as understanding how tired you can feel when translating for prolonged periods of time. How children (EAL) who seem to be working at or above the expected level in all subjects can sometimes struggle with a complex task such as syntax.

It is a fairly common practice in sessions alerting students to the experience of EAL learners to subject them to ‘language shock’, i.e. to make them listen to a short talk or attempt to decipher a text in a language with which they have no, or very little, familiarity. We have also used this approach with success in past initiatives and in this current project. While this approach has distinct value, there are clearly limitations in the extent to which it replicates the classroom tasks faced by many EAL learners. Accordingly, our draft resource on ‘Language Detectives: Exploring structures and patterns across and within languages’ used a modified Linguistic Olympiad (http://www.uklo.org) puzzle to allow a rather closer approximation to the active problem-solving, hypothesis-testing and inferencing that EAL pupils may often need to employ in moving between the structures and lexis of their own languages and English. This activity was well-received by the teacher educators when we trialled it in one research site. The following comment from a teacher educator points up the value of such an exercise that provides a clear sense of the cognitive challenges, and their associated emotional demands, that may be faced by many EAL learners:

I think the activity to put them in the place of the learner is really important, because it’s all very well telling someone it’s different, it’s hard, but that’s the closest they’ll get, possibly, to really having an understanding of. Because if you think about how long we spent on one, two, three, four, five, six, seven sentences, and analysing it and talking about it. But in the classroom, the kids, the sentences come and go, and there are hundreds within a lesson. So when you multiply what we went through to decode just seven sentences, and that they’re having to do that in real time as the speech is happening, reading ‘s going on and we’re moving from one activity to the next, to the next. And the emotional impact that that can have on the kids, and how exhausting it is.

Another lecturer pointed out how EAL learners may often face the large cognitive load of dealing in parallel with reading a text and attending to teacher talk that may have only a tangential relation to that text; and made the following suggestion for a training activity:

Well it might be quite interesting actually, on that point, to almost replicate the environment that some of our students find themselves in by presenting them with some text in that language but also having someone speaking that language but completely different to what’s on the text; because that’s what we do, isn’t it? We present a worksheet, and then we talk about something that’s vaguely related to the worksheet that’s different to what’s on the words – they’re trying to translate that and what you’re saying, and, I think, if we can put trainees into that

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kind of pressure situation a little bit it might make them appreciate a bit more what an EAL learner is going through.

Vocabulary development: what does it entail? On the topic of vocabulary development one staff participant noted that a ‘positive side’ of the new curriculum is that ‘vocabulary development is very much emphasised, as is the teaching of grammar.’ However, this participant then went on to qualify this enthusiastic statement by stressing the need for any approach to vocabulary development to be infused with an alertness to ‘the importance of world knowledge’:

Thinking about the importance of world knowledge, and prior knowledge. And this again, this is about good teaching of reading. Recognising that whilst pupils may be able to say their words, we can’t be sure that they understand what those words mean. … There’s a lot of, you know, children are very quick to pick up how to use phonics and decode words. But, you know, children from another culture you’ve got to be, you know, particularly aware of the fact that they might not know what a bedspread is, or a piggy bank … you would want them [students] to be doing that with all pupils, but I think that’s particularly important for children who [are EAL learners].

As the concluding chapter of this report will reveal the resources that we devised to aid vocabulary development aim to move tutors and students away from a narrow denotative definition to considering the network of meanings associated with a word and the contexts of their use. Subject specific literacies There was a recognition on the part of quite a number of the interview participants of the challenges that the lexis, syntax and text structures of individual school subjects might pose for EAL learners. The following quotation from a staff participant encapsulates the main thrust of talk on this topic:

Scientific literacy … I don’t think students realise that the absorption of English takes as long as it does – and then on the outside a child could be functioning, speaking, getting on with peers but, you know, when it comes to specific subjects like science actually it’s got a whole language and literacy of its own that need sort of an understanding.

Her comments here resonate with the well-established finding that achieving literacy in English in academic subjects has a much lengthier trajectory than that of achieving fluency in English for general communicative purposes (Thomas and Collier, 1997; Cummins, 1984, 2000). Implicitly at least, they also point up the need to unpack the form as well as the content of school subjects.

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The following statement reveals how one of the student participants appreciated the additional challenge that can arise for EAL learners when difficult concepts cast in subject-specific lexis are being explicated in English:

… [for EAL pupils] it would be very difficult especially with physics because you need to have a good grasp of English. Like, for instance, when you, say, explain the concepts of mass and weight – English kids themselves think of it as the same thing. But in physics it’s different. So, I imagine for an EAL child, even if they’re fluent, like for them to kind of grasp that will be difficult … I can imagine it being extra difficult.

Another student participant brought out clearly the difficulties that can arise for EAL pupils when they lack secure knowledge of English to serve as a foundation for literary analysis:

… one of my biggest challenges is the accessibility of the texts that they’re studying, which is really difficult. So I can’t get the whole of the Shakespeare play translated into Slovakian; and then on top of that we’ve got to go through literary devices … I’m trying to teach what personification is and stuff like that. And they haven’t even got a clue what the sentence is in front of them. So it’s like all the requirements for English, it’s just extremely difficult for pupils whose basic English isn’t good enough. Because if you’re not understanding what the sentence is saying, how can you explain what the techniques are.

For one of the study sites the current project created a session for delivery to student teachers on EAL and subject literacies. Staff commented favourably on this session, with one lecturer, for example, stating that:

… they [the students] saw it as really relevant, they were really interested by it. They found it really accessible. They understood all of the concepts. They were able to draw local comparisons. And I think it enhanced their practice of what they do with EAL pupils who they have in the classroom.

This session was also seen to have had a more general benefit in enhancing students’ thinking about supporting the literacy of all their students. Here is a Modern Foreign Language lecturer on this theme: ‘It was kind of dual purpose. It enhanced what they were doing in MFL, but also made them think about the wider issues. And, and supporting literacy in general, but I thought it was a really good opportunity to raise awareness as well.’ A teacher educator in PE echoed this message concerning the benefits for all pupils of focusing students’ attention on EAL and subject literacies, and in addition highlighted the message that the session gave that attention to language is a key part of the teacher’s role.

But it’s also, I think, it’s made them think about in terms of PE terminology, especially when it comes to theory, that it’s not just the students having English as an additional language, but often the students who have got English as a first language they’re having to learn a new set of language … And it’s been beneficial

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for some of the teaching of pupils who have perhaps got low self-esteem about their own level of English and they’re the, you know, English speakers. … And, and their attitudes about what their role as a PE teacher, developing what their role is as a teacher of the pupils; and taking on board, no it is, it is part of their skill set and toolkit that they need to think about these things.

The importance of knowledge about language(s) A number of the staff participants recognised that students’ engagement with subject-specific literacies and literacy across the curriculum was strengthened when they possessed a foundation of knowledge about language and a metalanguage in which to discuss language and literacy. A science educator observed that:

I think one of the key challenges with, you know, subjects like science where there’s a lot of specialist terminologies, one of the things that helps teachers is an awareness of what I’m going to call … basic linguistics ... just an understanding of how language works. But I find when I’m talking about that with our trainees, they don’t really understand even simple ideas about language. They don’t know what a prefix is, or a suffix, you know … And so I think an understanding for the trainee teachers of that could help them, help their EAL learners quite significantly. But it’s how to get them to really go back to square one.

It was noted that a foundation of knowledge about language would allow students to monitor their own language use in a more informed manner and be alert to how it might impact on their pupils:

And it’s almost as if we’re trying to get them to, you know, understand what, what does each bit do within that word or, you know, in phrases and sentences, what’s the function of each part there. And an awareness of … their own vocabulary, and where it’s likely to cause young learners, and in particular EAL learners, obstacles.

Chapter two of the report has set out the range of grammatical knowledge that teachers can be expected to acquire to meet the expectations set out in the current National Curriculum in England. In that chapter we also presented UKLA’s, and our own, critique of the National Curriculum’s failure to take a sufficiently expansive view of knowledge about language. As part of our critique and suggestions for expansion we observed that: ‘Assisting EAL learners to understand the grammar of English will also be enabled if teachers have at least a basic knowledge of how structures and forms vary across languages.’ This point was raised by one of our lecturer participants who talked of how:

I think I’d also want students to appreciate linguistic features. So having appreciation or an understanding that a child’s first language, or their home language, might well impact on the way in which they access English, and the way in which they develop English, and that not all children will develop English necessarily in the same ways. So that they might then be mindful of the kind of misconceptions, or the issues that children might have in their written English, or

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indeed their spoken English, and appreciate that that might well be that the child is directly translating from a first language, or another language. That, that for me is absolutely key.

This has also been a key consideration for us in developing the resource that we have created within the project that seeks to give tutors and student teachers a clear sense of central ways in which structures and forms differ across languages.

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Chapter 7: Meeting Language and Literacy Needs

Historically, reading and writing were considered to be the standard markers of literacy. However, it is now recognised that this is too limited a conception and that literacy is more complex than traditional perspectives allow (Foley, 2017). A body of work associated with the term New Literacy Studies (NLS) views literacy as a set of socially and culturally situated practices, rather than simply as a range of technical academic skills that operate at an individual level (Heath, 1983: Street, 1984; Gee, 1990). This shift in perspective has embraced the plural and discursive nature of literacy and integrates ways of being and doing in the world (Luke, 1995; Gee, 2005). ‘Literacy education is often seen as a key pedagogic site for inclusion and social justice as a great deal of academic learning done in schools and beyond is contingent upon students’ literacy capabilities. Without the capacity to make meaning with texts, people remain limited in their participation as learners and citizens’ (Dooley et al, 2013, p.65). The central importance of the development of students’ literacy capabilities raises questions for us about the current organisation and content of teacher education programmes in terms of how they prepare student teachers to adapt to the literacy demands in today’s linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms. It is recognised within research exploring the development of literacies that students’ participation in, and success beyond school has a great deal to do with the conditions we set up for them as learners (Rodgers, 2013, p.9; Schleppegrell, 2004; Anderson et al, 2016a; Foley, 2017). Pennycook acknowledges that the various sites in which teachers work have become places of struggle as they actively engage within ‘complex sociopolitical and cultural political space[s]’ (2004, p.333). This is particularly relevant when considering the development of literacy, which is not a culturally or politically neutral term. Dooley’s work aligns with such notions and highlights the fact that ‘literacy, teaching and literacy teacher education are critical social practices…learning from and with students occurs in social, cultural and highly polticised spaces’ (Dooley et al., 2013, p.65). It is therefore important to prepare teachers who are capable of, and disposed to, developing literacies for all students that are connected to their lifeworlds and content area studies (Dooley et al, 2013, p.70). The questions then arise of the extent to which teachers currently entering the profession: possess the dispositions to recognise the linguistic and cultural resources that EAL pupils bring; and the capacities to meet their language and literacy needs in a responsive manner. In addition, to what extent do teacher educators feel prepared to extend the knowledge base and skills of student teachers to allow them to interact with EAL learners in an appreciative and capable fashion? The following sections present findings from our study that shed light on these questions, starting with relevant results from the two student teacher surveys.

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Openness to recognising the cultural, linguistic knowledge of EAL learners A number of the survey questions explored the student respondents’ openness to recognising the cultural, linguistic and literacy knowledge and experience of pupils learning EAL. Given the strong consensus in the literature on the importance of schools recognising and appreciating the languages that pupils speak outside the classroom, a question in both surveys asked for responses to the statement: ‘Schools should recognise and value the languages that their pupils speak at home and in their communities.’ It will be seen from Table 7.1 that there was a strongly positive pattern of response to this statement, with 89.8% of students in the first survey and almost all, 96.9%, in the second survey answering in the categories ’strongly agree’ and ‘agree’. Table 7.1: Responses in the first and second surveys to the statement: ‘Schools should recognise and value the languages that their pupils speak at home and in their communities’.

Survey Strongly agree

Agree Unsure Disagree Strongly Disagree

First survey (97) 55.1% (61) 34.7% (5) 2.8% (1) 0.6% (12) 6.8%

Second survey (34) 63.6% (18) 33.3% (1) 1.9% (1) 1.9% (0) 0 %

A second question focused attention on the responsibilities of individual teachers, as opposed to the preceding question that located responsibility in schools: ‘It is important for all teachers to know what languages their pupils speak outside school.’ Table 7.2 displays the similar pattern of response to this question, with 93.7% in the first survey and 98.1% in the second survey, i.e. all but one, answering in the categories ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’. Table 7.2: Responses in the first and second surveys to the statement: ‘It is important for all teachers to know what languages their pupils speak outside school.’

Survey Strongly agree

Agree Unsure Disagree Strongly Disagree

First survey (96) 54.2% (70) 39.5% (3) 1.7% (0) 0 % (8) 4.5%

Second survey (36) 66.6% (17) 31.5% (0) 0 % (1) 1.9% (0) 0 %

Two following questions broadened the scope of attention out from language to pupils’ prior schooling experience and degree of acquisition of literacies in languages other than English. Preceding research (Arnot et al., 2014; Anderson et al., 2016a has highlighted the value of teachers learning about EAL pupils’ experience of schooling. Accordingly, we asked the respondents in both surveys to indicate their level of agreement with the statement that: ‘Knowing about their pupils’ schooling before coming to the UK is necessary for all teachers.’ Table 7.3 shows the strong level of support for this statement with 88.7% answering in the categories ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ in the first survey and 92.6% in these categories in the second survey. A broadly similar pattern of response, displayed in Table 7.4, was evident in reactions to the statement: ‘It is important for all teachers to know about their pupils’ literacy

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skills in languages besides English.’ (In the first survey 82.6% responded within the categories ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’. In the second survey 92.6% responded in these categories.) Table 7.3: Responses in the first and second surveys to the statement: ‘Knowing about their pupils’ schooling before coming to the UK is necessary for all teachers.’

Survey Strongly agree

Agree Unsure Disagree Strongly Disagree

First survey (79) 44.6% (78) 44.1% (11) 6.2% (4) 2.3% (5) 2.8%

Second survey (30) 55.6% (20) 37.0% (4) 7.4% 0 0 % 0 0 %

Table 7.4: Responses in the first and second surveys to the statement: ‘It is important for all teachers to know about their pupils’ literacy skills in languages besides English.’

Survey Strongly agree

Agree Unsure Disagree Strongly Disagree

First survey (65) 36.5% (82) 46.1% (24) 13.5% (3) 1.7% (4) 2.2%

Second survey (27) 50.0% (23) 42.6% (3) 5.6% (1) 1.9% (0) 0 %

Meeting the Language and Literacy Needs of EAL Pupils: Actions and Challenges Consonant with these survey responses, student teachers and teacher educators within this study all agreed on the importance of taking action to meet the language and literacy needs of EAL pupils; and often drew on their experiences to exemplify their perceptions about needs in this area. Key messages that emerged from the student surveys, and teacher educator and student focus group interviews in relation to this topic are exemplified in the following paragraphs. When participants were asked what they perceived to be helpful approaches to meeting the language and literacy needs of EAL pupils, there was a range of different responses in the survey data. Several students referred to specific ‘strategies’ while others wrote about the importance of immersing pupils in English, and the recognition of a pupil’s home language being a valuable asset for learning in the classroom:

Using lots of images, creating lessons they can relate to. Using translations of key words. extra time, images as support, hard copies, large font. Immersion in the language, but also not to expect that target language will be produced immediately. … involving EAL learners in lessons more by incorporating multicultural elements and additionally the use of visual aids to help students in their understanding.

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I think allowing the pupils to continue to develop their home language can be used as a useful tool to assist with their learning, and ensure they understand the content of the lesson.

Responses in the surveys from several students drew on input they had received on their courses and in schools about meeting needs and highlighted the importance of understanding and empathizing with the experience and challenges of being an EAL pupil in English medium classrooms:

An understanding of their position. Best lessons I was ever given was when a Swede gave a 15-minute lesson in Swedish and gave us worksheets to complete to understand the perspective of EAL students in class.

Be patient and smile, try to be relaxed, as it could be terrifying for the student.

Identifying, and empathising with, the problems EAL learners may face constantly when not being taught effectively.

Student teachers in the focus groups at the two main research sites described a number of strategies that they were employing to meet the needs of EAL pupils. Providing space and tools for operating in other languages, along with engaging in particular communication strategies featured in discussions about how best to support pupils:

I’ve also found that what really, really helped the EAL students is that if you give them a laptop and they’re unsure about a certain word they can google it and use the translator – and then that really helps them. It’s easier than using a dictionary ‘cause you say part of the word and it translates it.

So I rely heavily on the dictionary. It’s like my, my classroom it’s like Slovakian and Polish [dictionaries]. And it’s like they’re the best things. So on my planning sheets it’s got ‘see a dictionary, see a dictionary’ all over my planning sheet. So I find them really useful.

Well I, I’ve never been a performer, never been into drama or anything like that. But now I find myself actually acting out lines.

What is interesting in the excerpt below is that this student teacher was aware that dealing with a range of languages raises questions about how other pupils would feel when a language is being used to teach one student that is not necessarily relevant to others in the classroom. This highlighted the diversity that student teachers are working with in classrooms:

I think if you label things and say if you’ve got, it’s difficult if you’ve got like eight different languages in the class, you’ve then got a list [students laugh]. But if you know you’ve got a couple of one and, you know, you’re not doing the other kids any harm. In fact you’re fulfilling your, your cross-curricular learning. If they come away, like you said about your geography lesson in Spanish. If they come away with knowing I’m,

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like I’m doing Oliver Twist and I’m labelling things for the, for the kids anyway ‘cause I thought they won’t know what a ladle and a copper pot is and all of those sort of things. You know, if you put it in Polish underneath so as that your Polish students have got that word, it’s not gonna hurt the kids who don’t need it. And they’ll learn a few Polish words.

The following account from the same focus group reveals the ways individual student teachers are trying to think about complex language issues as they practise, and develop their own understanding about difference and the pedagogical approaches necessary for multilingual contexts.

We’ve got an English-only policy in all classrooms. And they’re not allowed, unless I invite, you know, if I said, ‘Oh, can you explain’. Other than that they’re not allowed to speak any other language than English. But at social times it’s very much encouraged ‘cause they need, you know, so they’ve got that Identification with everybody who speaks their language and comes from their culture and, yeah, freedom of choice (Student 1).

See I, I was sat here and said that yeah I encourage my pupils to write in their language. But I kind of refrain from them from speaking in their language unless I’m trying to speak to somebody in English and they’re looking at me completely blank face, and I look to another and say ‘Can you, please, help me’. And they’ll translate to what I’m saying. But even though I encourage them to write and then translate it, I try and get them to speak, to have conversations in English (Student 2).

These extracts provide insights into how student teachers’ interactions with EAL pupils were bounded by school policies and we catch glimpses of how other languages may be positioned in classrooms. It would appear that there is a lack of available ways of thinking about the multilingual nature of classrooms and how languages develop within such contexts. Teacher Educators’ Perceptions about Needs The majority of teacher educators talked about the approaches that would help student teachers meet the language and literacy needs of EAL pupils in classrooms in terms of principles and broader strategies, rather than specifics. The following account exemplifies this:

I suppose, on the one hand making them aware of these fundamental principles, if you like. But, you know, exclusion may not be best. You know, you know, the importance of world knowledge, the importance of, you know, cultural, recognising, you know, cultural gaps, etcetera, on the one hand. But on the other hand, giving them, you know, a bank of, not, you know, not earth-shattering activities, but just basic strategies, if you like, of what, you know, what works. Using visual aids, using graphic organisers, using paired talk, using partners. You know, drama, having key phrases.

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All that sort of, I guess, thinking about the, or knowing something about the benefits of letting children work in their home language sometimes (Teacher Educator x).

But actually trying to get across to students things like guided reading, and that side of things, verbalising the comprehension process that's going on in their own head. (Teacher Educator y).

However, a more specific and lengthier response was provided by a teacher educator from the Teach First route to teacher training. She initially talked about more practical strategies that would support learning, making an important distinction between simplifying content versus making it accessible. She then moved on to foreground what she felt was an important issue, i.e. the development of teacher empathy when there are significant barriers to accessing the curriculum.

Lots [of specific actions], well I mean in terms of primary practice, emphasis on visual cues, emphasis on practical experiences, emphasis on making learning meaningful, whether that might be the use of words in home languages, the use of displays. I don’t necessarily mean, and this is what I challenge the students on, making it simpler, but making it accessible so the children can actually achieve at an appropriate level, as opposed to it just necessarily being dumbed down.

Another one would be, and again you could argue that it would be a feature of good literacy teaching, but the provision of scaffolds. So again encouraging students to empathise. It’s something, there's an activity that I did with some of the Teach First students. The Teacher First students like to construct themselves as being very able; and I, I think for a lot of them they struggle to empathise with what it must be like when you don’t quite get something straight away.

But some of our participants have never encountered barriers to their learning. So I think to get them to put themselves in the shoes of barriers that EAL children might face, or indeed any children might face, it helps them then to think about well, if you were encountering this barrier, what would help you. So for an EAL child it might be that you've heard a story once, you've heard it repeated, how would it help if you've got a copy of the text on your desk when you're then asking, you know, you're being asked to write, or you're being asked to do something related to it? Or how would it help if you've got some key words translated into your first language, assuming you're literate in your first language. So we do activities like that to try to get them to empathise, and also to move them away from the deficit, slightly benevolent model [of] these poor EAL children who don’t speak a word of English. (Teacher Educator z).

The concerns raised by teacher educators in this study about the perceived lack of empathy that some student teachers may demonstrate when working with EAL pupils is given attention in other studies in Anglophone countries (e.g. Lucas and Villegas, 2011; Gabriel and Wagner, 2014). These studies highlight the fact that issues of language and culture are not often addressed on ITT programme courses, thus inhibiting the development of a differentiated

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understanding among student teachers about the need for sensitivity and responsive approaches to linguistic and cultural difference. Differences and Gaps in Cultural Knowledge Impacting on Comprehension Comments made by both student teachers and tutors about the needs of EAL pupils revealed an understanding of how lessons may position these learners as cultural outsiders when they were engaged in literacy events. It was recognised that the provision for EAL pupils to participate in a common curriculum, and to be exposed to ‘common’ texts used in mainstream classrooms, was not enough to allow pupils to gain an understanding of the written and spoken meanings that were being constructed within a particular cultural setting. Student Teachers Focus groups with student teachers identified cultural and prior knowledge as being important aspects of the development of literacy during reading events or vocabulary learning. There were very positive discussions around classroom practices with some student teachers who intentionally set out within their lessons: to connect with EAL pupils’ backgrounds; and to draw on their cultural knowledge and perspectives on particular political issues and events. The following brief statement illustrates these inclusive actions:

And last week I did Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, so I had my Indian boy was describing all the terms to the children, and clarifying the words. And I let him basically lead the session (Student Teacher 1).

The extract beneath shows clearly a student teacher’s close attention to how connections can be forged to EAL pupils’ backgrounds and experiences and intention to take the perspective of pupils who may have had direct, and troubling, experience of political and social conflicts. This extract gives the sense of an ethically aware teacher who recognises and is attempting to negotiate the moral complexities that may arise in a multicultural classroom.

Something just, kind of, to add to this kind of idea that we're not really sure sometimes when people have arrived how advanced are they. To what extent we need support, etcetera. For myself, and maybe this is just, sort of, for my area; because I'm a history teacher and I do a lot of politics and I do a lot of war. I do, like, modern, sort of, international relations. For me at times it can be a little bit iffy if I'm not sure where the student's from. So, for example, a Sri Lankan girl, and she's wonderful, and I do teach bits and pieces about the Tamil Tigers, and her family were directly involved and had to leave due to the violence within that region. And obviously in knowing that, that would change what I'm teaching, or how I'm teaching it to some extent, because I'd never want there to be, sort of, this underlying tone of almost are we pro- or anti-immigration. Is it okay? So, for example, I was doing nuclear war at one point. Well, I was teaching nuclear war at one point, and having the knowledge, for example, if I had an Asian student in there who'd had a background who was linked in some way,

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it might change my pitch because it becomes somewhat more relatable, and mostly relatable to some students (Student Teacher 2).

In a follow-up focus group interview at one of the main research sites, student teachers drew on input they had from their teacher educators who used our project’s resources to talk both about cultural knowledge and about how the English language works in terms of word forms and syntax when developing vocabulary.

Or for some, yeah, and for someone who isn't, when you're thinking of that EAL learner. And she [programme tutor], she talked about how we construct things and how we use existing knowledge. Like the fairy tale thing is, but how we use it, you know, existing knowledge to what you bring to the lesson to enable you to learn that. So, it's having that, yeah, that cultural knowledge that enables you to access stuff that goes on.

… we need, it's very important to know where the kids come from.

Yeah. And we've got that passage, haven't we, when she said, you know, how can you work out, it was nonsense wasn't it, but how you can work something out of it, and because of your knowledge of verbs and your knowledge of…

Of sounds as well.

what sort of endings you've got that determined what sort of word it was? And it's having that sort of knowledge, isn't it, about the structure and knowing that 'ly' words and 'ing' words, and stuff like that, but they won't have. And I think that's the thing that pupils actually, a boy in my year seven class, his word endings, it's his grammar. He knows the words, he can't adapt the words. He doesn’t know whether it's and 'ing', or an 'ed' … (Student Teachers)

Teacher Educators Teacher educators also displayed cultural awareness and saw the need to adopt an approach that was guided by such an awareness:

You know, just bringing in all of that. Everything that's going to help them. This is a, here's the hare and the tortoise, what do you think this is, you know, what do you know about fables? And, so you know, yes, it's cultural, but it also affects comprehension development (Teacher Educator a).

I mean, one of my favourite examples I always, you know how you have your favourite…I always tell the students when I'm talking about, I was once watching a lesson and the teacher said, and I said the same thing myself, put your hand up if you're a packed lunch. I, there happened to be a little boy. I think he was from Iran. ... And I was looking, and I thought …we say that sort of thing all the time. If you're a

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packed lunch, go over there, and if you're a hot dinner, sit. You know, and of course they always laugh. I said no, but think about it, you know. It's that sort of, you know, implicit… because if you're listening to that, sort of, imprecise language, your day is going to be far more confused than it needs to be (Teacher Educator b).

I said about the early years principles, it's going back to well if, it's almost if these children were three, you would have a lot of that stripped away ‘cause you'd know that as a teacher, that this child may not have had that experience, or that life experience, etcetera, and so you would adapt the learning. And it's about those principles being drawn upon and utilised regardless of the age of the children, because well there is a lot of short cuts in language and literacy. And, and it's that that many children can struggle with when, along with all of the ways that language is, is used and inferred (Teacher Educator c).

It is clear that some student teachers and teacher educators recognised that the lack of content or cultural knowledge linked to a text is often a major cause for difficulty in understanding. It is recognised within academic literature that cultural knowledge is not necessarily shared across different languages. These differences can leave large chunks of text semantically disconnected as the demand for culturally specific knowledge in the text increases (Bernhardt, 2003). Misunderstandings can also occur when learners draw on L1 cultural knowledge and apply it to the interpretation of texts created within a different culture. As recognised by Student Teacher 2, specific words or topics can activate different meanings, images and emotions from an EAL pupil whose family has fled to the UK from difficult circumstances in their country of origin. Such experiences can conjure up different social and cultural understandings and interpretations of the world. It could therefore be argued that the first language and experiences pupils have had become a ‘cocoon that wraps around the interpretation of the second-language text’ (Bernhardt, 2003:10).

These were important matters we took into account during the design process. We designed activities and tasks that enabled teacher educators and student teachers to reflect on the cultural knowledge and experiences embedded in English vocabulary and classroom texts. We sought to raise awareness and develop an understanding of how literacy events could make space for an exploration of embedded meanings and allow for different interpretations of a word or a text to be considered, thus legitimising the diversity within the profile of the class.

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Chapter 8: Teacher Confidence and Teacher Education Background

Given that EAL pupils are taught in mainstream classes, mainstream teachers are responsible

for meeting their language and literacy needs (Leung, 2001). However, the literature shows

that despite the policy of mainstreaming since the 1980s, and opportunities for professional

development that helps teachers to understand the language and learning needs of EAL

pupils, there have been limited changes to every day practice. One of the key issues that is

recognised within the literature is that there is a need to investigate the reasons associated

with why change in practice is slow. Some researchers argue that in order to gain insight into

this issue, there is a need to explore the perceptions and beliefs that underpin teachers’

classroom practices (Franson, 1999; Borg, 2006; Gibbons, 2009; Johnson, 2009). We have

sought to contribute to this project by exploring teacher educators’ and student teachers’

perceptions within this current study.

Franson’s (1999) study conducted in England recognises that while teachers have an

important role in ensuring that EAL pupils are included in common classroom practices, they

are often daunted by such responsibilities. Lucas and Villegas (2001) researching in the United

States have reported similar experiences to those in the UK. They found that despite changes

to national policy and the emphasis placed on the inclusion of EAL pupils into mainstream

classes, mainstream teachers had not been given sufficient preparation for teaching in

culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms (2001, p.40). Grant and Wong also raise

questions concerning English language learners in mainstream schools and ask: ‘Why do

barriers continue to restrict access to full literacy for many language-minority learners in the

United States?’ (2003, p.386). Grant and Wong (2003) posit that the reason there is a lack of

equality within school systems for English language learners is related to the failure of teacher

education programmes to prepare mainstream and reading teachers to meet their specific

needs. They also propose that a first crucial step to address these issues is to enable such

teachers to become aware of their own linguistic and cultural deficit models (Grant and

Wong, 2003, p.393).

Both Cummins (2000) and Hawkins (2011) observe that while policy specifications and

classroom practices are non-discriminatory in their intent, and seek equal opportunity for

pupils learning EAL, the lack of teacher knowledge in relation to EAL pedagogy often results

in discriminatory experiences for these pupils. Such practices, as argued by Reeves, not only

flatten differences (Reeves,2004:46) within classrooms, but render the linguistic and cultural

capital brought into such contexts invisible (Bernstein, 1996). As a result, pupils learning EAL

experience educational inequalities as they engage in literacy practices in mainstream

classrooms. One way in which to limit discriminatory experiences within schools and

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classrooms is to include within ITE a critical dimension in education about language. Hawkins

and Norton argue that teachers are in ‘a key position to address educational inequality, both

because of the particular learners they serve, many of whom are marginalised members of

the wider community, and because of the subject matter they teach – language – which can

itself serve to both empower and marginalize’ (Hawkins and Norton, 2009, p.32). The

question then arises of how teachers can be assisted to employ language and literacy

practices that are tools for inclusion rather than exclusion? Addressing this question has been

a key concern of this current project.

The following sections give an account of how student teachers and teacher educators talked

about their sense of self and their confidence as they considered the language and literacy

needs of pupils for whom English is an additional language. These findings raised questions

that had important implications for the project in terms of appropriate input on teacher

education programmes and what we might understand to be ‘good practice’ when

monolingual assumptions about literacies are reflected upon.

Teacher Identity

Moving towards more inclusive practices may involve not only the acquisition of new

perspectives, strategies and techniques but also a shift in teachers’ self-image and

professional identity. Street (2003) and Gee (2008) argue that the ways in which people

engage in literacy practices are rooted in specific ways of knowing, being and identity formed

within particular social contexts and what Gee (2004, 2008) terms as ‘Discourses’ with a

capital ‘D’. How teachers enact literacy practices in their classroom impacts on the

opportunities that are made available for EAL pupils to establish new identities and engage in

the wider society (Freire, 1974; Wallace, 2003; Janks, 2010; Masuda, 2012). Ball argues that

teachers’ views about reading literacy practices are often built on the dominant Discourses

within their professional contexts that may determine what counts and what doesn’t count

(Ball, 1993).

Studies, both national and international, recognize that the increasing responsibility that

teachers face in meeting the needs of diverse learners within classrooms, impacts on their

sense of identity and their confidence as professionals (e.g. Foley, 2010, 2013; Anderson et

al, 2016a; de Jong and Harper, 2011; Kosnik et al, 2013). Teachers across these studies

recognized that they needed a broader knowledge base in terms of theory and practice that

would allow them to meet the needs of a diverse range of learners more effectively. As

Howard aptly states teachers ‘can’t teach what [they] don’t know’ (Howard, 1999).

It can be concluded that what was previously regarded as knowledge and expertise in a

monolingual English-speaking classroom is now no longer fully fit for purpose. Teachers

report feelings of being de-skilled and disempowered as they apply a known context-specific

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pedagogy to a multilingual and multicultural classroom (Foley, 2013; Foley et al, 2013;

Anderson et al, 2016). Within these particular studies, teachers’ feelings of being deskilled

seemed to diminish their sense of agency as they sought to meet the needs of EAL learners.

A reframing of what constitutes ‘good practice’ within teacher education settings and

classrooms has become a pressing matter in the light of the complexities associated with

meeting the language and literacy needs of EAL learners. This would enable teacher

educators to consider the need for a shift in their own professional identities and sense of

self as they recognise the change in the knowledge, skills and dispositions that student

teachers need to develop. Such a shift would provide opportunities for student teachers to

be inducted into professional learning communities that make space for their own

professional identities to become grounded in the lives of the diverse student population that

they are serving.

Findings: Teacher Confidence and Teacher Education

A central theme that emerged from the data sets in this project foregrounded issues of confidence and professional learning. The following sections report on the ways in which student teachers and teacher educators communicated limitations in their agency and knowledge in relation to meeting the needs of EAL learners. Teacher educators’ perceptions of the lack of opportunities for professional development that would enable them to continue to build a repertoire of pedagogic practices for today’s diverse classrooms are also reported. Questions in both surveys set out to gain a sense of how confident student teachers felt in their ability to support EAL learners. It will be seen from Figure 8.1 that there was considerable variation in the ratings of confidence by respondents to the first survey, (not confident at all, 5%; little confidence, 26%; some confidence, 41%; confident, 25%; very confident, 3%). Responses in the second survey display a certain increase in confidence with only 18% answering within the categories ‘little confidence’ and ‘not confident at all’, as opposed to 31% answering in these categories in the first survey. However, it might be seen as troubling that around a fifth of the respondents at this stage of their training still saw themselves as having ‘little confidence’. 35% in the second survey as opposed to 25% in the first survey declared themselves to be ‘confident’. Almost equal proportions across the two surveys stated that they had ‘some confidence’. Some caution is required in interpreting this set of findings. In addition to the general notes of caution sounded in the Methods chapter on making comparisons between the surveys, it needs to be recognized that by the time of the second survey respondents had had a greater amount of teaching experience that may have led to a general increase in their confidence in their teaching.

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0

10 (18%)

23 (43%)

19 (35%)

2 (4%)

0 5 10 15 20 25

Not confident at all

Little confidence

Some confidence

Confident

Very confident

Second Survey

9 (5%)

46 (26%)

73 (41%)

45 (25%)

6 (3%)

0 20 40 60 80

Not confident at all

Little confidence

Some confidence

Confident

Very confident

First Survey

Figures 8.1a, 8.1b: responses to the question ‘At this point in your ITE programme how confident do you feel in your ability to support EAL learners?’ Total responses = 179 Total responses = 54 Preparation for meeting EAL learners’ needs These findings concerning confidence need to be read against the findings from the second survey and from interviews concerning the levels of input that the student teachers had received concerning EAL matters. We look first at findings from the second survey on this topic; and then report observations that student teachers made in focus groups concerning their confidence in, and preparation for, responding to EAL learners. Respondents in the second survey were asked the question: ‘Looking back at your training course from the beginning, have you had any input during the institution-based part of your course directly related to working with EAL/bilingual learners?’ Of the 53 responses to this question, only six indicated that they had received no input during the training course, (although a seventh answer can be seen to belong to this category, ‘only in my own lessons, using my resources’). Seven stated that the only input they had been given was a single lecture: ‘one lecture’, ‘lecture on EAL at the university’. A few reported getting a lecture that had an activity associated with it: ‘EAL lecture, framework task to complete.’ One student mentioned only one session on EAL, but this single session had been distinctly valuable: ‘We had an extremely informative session about teaching EAL learners. This session gave us strategies and resources.’ This comment can be read as pointing up the need to give attention to the quality as well as the quantity of input concerning EAL. Several students wrote that they had had input on EAL in relation to the subject areas that they were teaching, for example:

Yes, one lecture on different types of language used and seminar sessions related to my subject.

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Yes, within our English lectures we have discussed how we might appropriately engage EAL learners with certain texts/lessons in general. Also in maths lectures we discussed how difficulties in language may impair students in demonstrating their maths knowledge.

While the general pattern that emerged in response to this question was of somewhat to distinctly limited input concerning EAL in initial training, there were a few answers which described a more extensive and intensive experience:

We had an EAL day in which we observed pupils with EAL and spoke to the EAL coordinator of the school. ….

Yes. We completed a ‘buddy initiative’ whereby we paired up with EAL students and took part in various activities with them over the course of 6 weeks. We then completed an essay on our experiences and reflected on the barriers to teaching EAL. We also worked closely with MFL students and took part in a teaching workshop which allowed a select group of students to teach a sport in a different language.

While comments presented later in this chapter indicate student teachers’ dissatisfaction with the extent of the training they had been given on practical strategies concerning EAL, a few appreciative notes were also sounded, as in the following survey response:

I have had several students within my lessons and have used useful tools offered from the course to help me deliver the lesson content to these students. This has included useful ideas for resources and differentiated homework examples.

Respondents in the second survey were also asked ‘While you were in schools did you receive any specific training in relation to meeting the language and literacy needs of pupils learning EAL?’ 25 of the 53 respondents to this question indicated that they had not received input while in schools. In addition, a student gave the response ‘before the course’, and another wrote ‘very basic’. Quite a number of the positive responses to this question appeared to refer to input from the university part of the course rather than to ‘in-house’ school provision. Two students had also gained ‘school-based’ input by taking the initiative to extend their knowledge in this area:

Only through my enhancement stage – I moved to a different school so I could gain experience in this area.

As my school does not have many EAL learners I visited another school where there are many EAL learners. I received information and support from a number of members of staff there including the EAL lead.

Given the shift in the balance of teacher education from universities towards schools, that was outlined in Chapter Two of this report, this set of findings has to be seen as troubling. Some

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students were themselves critical of the lack of input concerning EAL while they were in schools, as in the following statement: ‘No, we even had a letters and sounds phonics CPD day and EAL was not mentioned and there are children learning EAL in the school.’ When support was mentioned, it had sometimes taken the form of a whole school CPD session or sessions:

Yes – staff training days. Best approaches with EAL students.

Yes, X city’s EAL coordinator gave a presentation on the difficulties pupils face and strategies.

CPD at host school – inclusive literacy throughout the curriculum.

A few responses mentioned advice from an EAL specialist:

Yes, by EAL specialist who would offer support and advice on specialist pupils.

Yes, from EAL coordinator.

For one student interaction with experienced staff had been helpful: ‘School with 24 languages spoken. Often discussed with staff the approaches needed to support EAL pupils.’ Another student had ‘spent time with the new starters class, this is run by a teacher who is passionate about EAL.’ This last comment sparks the suggestion that while the bulk of student teachers might not be able to have direct experiences of skilled practice in relation to EAL they might have the vicarious experience of watching, and reflecting on, recordings of skilled practice. The questions in the second survey that have been considered in the preceding paragraphs were followed by two which asked students to rate the input or support they had received to date. It will be seen from table 8.1 that there is a somewhat positive picture in relation to general understanding of the needs of EAL learners, with the bulk of respondents answering in the category ‘some increase in understanding.’ (An argument could be made, however, that even 13% answering within the category ‘no /very little understanding’ is a troubling figure.)

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Table 8.1: responses to the question ‘Thinking about the input or support detailed above [i.e. on the training course in general and in schools themselves], to what extent do you feel that it has given you a better general understanding of the needs of EAL learners?

No/ very little understanding

Some increase in understanding

Considerable increase in understanding

13.2% (7) 66% (35) 20.8% (11)

Table 8.2: responses to the question: ‘To what extent do you feel that you have been able to develop extra strategies, ideas and resources for responding effectively, (within your own subject specialism(s)), to EAL learners?’

No/ very little increase in strategies and ideas

Some increase in strategies and ideas

Considerable increase in strategies and ideas

26.4% (14) 50.9% (27) 22.6% (12)

Turning to the levels of gains in strategies and ideas, here we see a spread of responses that may well reflect the variation in input and experience revealed in the answers to the preceding questions. It would seem to be a matter of concern that a quarter are answering in the category ‘no/very little increase in strategies and ideas’.

A follow-up question to these ratings asked respondents if there had been ‘any particular type of input that you found to be particularly helpful?’ Of the 42 responses to this question, seven answered ‘no’ or indicated that they had not received any input. In addition, a few students used the question to signal a desire for opportunities to explore the topic further: ‘It would be helpful to be able to talk to someone in our placement school to support us with EAL more specifically.’

Some respondents cited a lecture and accompanying materials/resources or an assignment on EAL as types of input that they found particularly useful, as in the following answers:

I found the EAL lectures particularly useful as they gave me a greater understanding of the importance of encouraging students to become bilingual, and to continue using their home language to help their learning.

The lecture and all of the materials exhibited in the lecture that can be used to support EAL learners.

The assignment in MFL. This gave me the opportunity to explore the subject more in-depth.

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Several students pointed up experiences in schools that had proved useful. Such experiences included being shown school resources and having conversations with EAL coordinators, as well as practical experience of teaching EAL pupils:

School support and advice from other teachers most helpful as well as experience in class and trying out strategies.

Working with teachers in the school who have been working with EAL students for a long time.

The students also wrote about specific knowledge, strategies or techniques in relation to EAL that had proved helpful such as an appreciation of academic vs. conversational language, visual aids, and scaffolding.

I found the suggestions regarding using visual materials, providing scaffolding for writing tasks, and generally explaining about how language acquisition develops particularly helpful

A few answers referred to input that helped them to consider how to empathise with, involve and integrate EAL pupils in the classroom, for example: ‘Identifying, and empathizing with, the problems EAL learners may face constantly when not being taught effectively.’

A subsequent question sought to explore the impact of any input on EAL on student teachers’ current or anticipated classroom practice: ‘What strategies or ideas have you encountered regarding EAL that you now mean to put into practice in the classroom? Has any input or support on EAL changed your classroom practice?’ Of the 44 responses to this question, five gave a negative reply, ‘no’, ‘N/A’; and a few noted that they had not received help and support to implement strategies in the classroom: ‘I don’t feel like I have had any support.’

A considerable number of responses described the use of visual aids and media, sometimes in combination with other strategies:

Using interactive media as a learning medium.

Use images to consolidate understanding and sit them next to a pupil who could model excellent language use.

Visual aids, using lots of pictures, peer mentoring. I found out most strategies from my EAL day, however some ideas were briefly covered in university sessions.

One student highlighted that: ‘Differentiation is key to teaching EAL pupils. I always have key words defined on the board and make sure that I make the lesson accessible to EAL learners.’ Other answers referred to strategies such as ‘buddying’, scaffolding practices and classroom seating arrangements.

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A number of respondents wrote about the use of L1 in the classroom as a result of their learning regarding EAL:

Using pupils’ home languages to create personalised worksheets to support learning.

The celebration of cultural understanding. Bringing the child’s MT into the classroom so we can all learn together.

Use of books in their language so they can follow structure and be familiar with the characters being discussed, use of labels in both languages around the classroom to pick up key school related vocabulary, use of role play to provide opportunity to try new language and respond to others, also highlighters to learner and teacher areas that need further support which can influence planning.

One student described how an increased awareness of, and responsiveness to, the needs of EAL learners had led to a general enhancement of classroom practice:

It has made me more aware of the different needs of all pupils, and I have been able to look at my planning and delivery closely to check it is accessible for all; including grammar on any presentations, or how accessible my resources are.

Respondents in the second survey were given the opportunity to ‘indicate, in relation to support for teaching EAL learners, a) any matters that you felt were not covered that should have been covered, b) matters that were covered, but that you felt needed to be addressed in greater depth.’ Four out of the 45 responses to this question answered ‘none’ or ‘N/A’ and there were a few positive comments about the coverage of EAL issues, such as ‘all covered very well’ and ‘I feel matters were covered as much as possible.’ Other respondents felt that there was a clear lack of support and that their programme should place greater emphasis on addressing EAL issues:

There is very little support or resources, systems in place to support these students. I would have liked to have been given clear examples and scenarios to work and learn from.

I understood we were meant to have more lectures on EAL at a later date but we never did. One lecture was not enough, especially seeing as in the schools where I was placed, in one 29 out of 30 were EAL learners and in the other one all 30 were EAL learners.

I gained no experience when on placements and was given very little in the way of strategies that I could use in schools from workshops or lectures at university.

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Many respondents detailed exactly what they felt was missing from current provision. These responses in the main fell into four categories: the need for more strategies and resources; more subject-specific input; more opportunities for practical experience or observation; a greater focus on specific teaching techniques and strategies.

… More about strategies for teaching as this was only discussed quite broadly, for example ‘visual aids’, would prefer more in-depth examples.

Strategies for helping trainees work with EAL students in their specialism.

a/differentiation b/lecture on specific strategies to use and not just say 'use of visuals’

It would have been helpful to observe more lessons that catered well to EAL learners. I feel like we discussed more than actually trialling teaching techniques.

Putting our learning into practice before entering a classroom environment.

The calls here for clearer delineation of techniques and strategies and greater specificity in illustrating appropriate practice in working with EAL pupils have been taken on board in the design of resources within the current project. Confidence and Preparation: Interview findings Student teacher confidence issues were also evident in the focus group interviews and this appeared to be linked to what they experienced, or were taught on their programmes and in schools. There was a strong impression from the student interviews in both main sites that there was not enough input or models of good practice in relation to EAL from their programmes. Some felt that this may have been a result partly of lack of tutor expertise. A student in Site 1 near the start of their course commented:

Sometimes I feel that maybe the lecturers themselves don’t have a lot of knowledge about EAL. It might be because some of them haven’t been in schools for a long time so they won’t have come across EAL [pupils] as much as what teachers come across today.

Other students in the same focus group seemed to feel that the brief input they had had did not address their need for practical classroom strategies:

We had a brief conversation about it. I actually said something about EAL and one of my colleagues said, ‘Well, what’s EAL?’ And we had a brief like, ‘this is what they are.’ And we carry on. [all laugh] But there hasn’t been anything like, ‘This is what you need to do’, or the scaffolds that you need to put in place to help them with maths.

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As well as this perceived lack, some students seemed to link their lack of confidence to concerns they had about the models of practice that they observed in schools. A focus group in site 2, which comprised both primary and secondary students, talked about the mixed experience they had in schools; while there were some positives, there was the clear perception that some of the pupils they encountered were not getting the kinds of support they needed.

And then occasionally, sort of, you would have moments where suddenly you think that this boy was sitting across the classroom, and he was maybe sitting there not doing anything ‘cause a lot of it is just straight over his head. And that's not to say I didn’t see the progress while I was there because I definitely did. And we had some little breakthroughs which were fantastic to witness, and really were exciting. But yeah, it's, when you don’t have support in the class, or if you don’t have any of the, sort of, targeted EAL interventions then I worried that, you know, we weren't giving him the time he needed to, sort of, pick up the language.

Indeed, a few students in a focus group in Site 1 had clearly been exposed to a model of very poor practice in one of their placement schools and foregrounded the lack of available EAL classroom practices:

I, when I was observing at my first placement school I went into a drama lesson. And [the drama teacher] she had a few EAL [pupils] and they were just sitting there and not actually taking part. And I said to her, I asked her why they weren’t taking part. And her answer was that she sees them as a nuisance sometimes. So the fact [is] that she says, ‘I don’t know what to do with them’. She says ‘they’ll just’, you know, ‘just ignore them’. I don’t think that’s bad on her. Well I do think it’s bad on her. Of course, I think it’s a lack of training. The training’s not widely available in schools.

Notwithstanding the ways that courses were structured and arranged because of recent shifts to school-based training outlined in Chapter Two, students seemed to feel that their programmes had responsibility to address this situation. One Teach First student at Site 2 made this clear, at the same time as commenting on the ambivalence – from her perspective – of her position in school:

Interviewer: This comment you made about the input, where do you think that maybe should've come from? Would it be from the school or from the university?

Student: I think it probably would have to come from the university. ‘Cause the school, the school is my employer and I've had CPD about it, but I haven't had any input from the, we have had some but nothing very extensive.

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The figures presented earlier in this chapter have revealed the distinct variation in students‘ratings of the degree to which their schools had acted to give them a greater understanding of, and strategies to meet, the needs of EAL learners. In line with these ratings, students whom we interviewed revealed concerns about the disparities in experience across different schools. The student quoted above, for example, said that she was the only one in her cohort who had had any significant experience of EAL during her training:

Interviewer: You were really the only student who was in a school with a, you know, a significant number of EAL learners?

Student: Yeah, I think that is the case, yeah.

Interviewer: So, when you talked to your friends on the course, and so on.

Student: I think possibly some of them have got one, or two, or none. Most of them haven't got any [EAL pupils].

This concern was also raised by students in another focus group discussion. They shared their experiences of different placement schools and pointed up different issues, such as in searching out data on EAL pupils and even in identifying EAL as a feature of provision in their school at all:

Student 1: I think I struggled, I struggled finding the data as well. I asked at the school and was given a printout and it had the children's names on, their year group, and it had their home language. So, that was a good starting point. But then going in deeper into that, so how many were, sort of, new arrivals in the country, and how many had been here for a while? That was harder information for me to get hold of.

Student 2: I feel like it's never really talked about. It's never really on the radar. There's no, like you said, there's no specific provision, and all of those children are, but the fact [is] that I've got one child who speaks Punjabi at home in my class. And, I don’t know, just the fact that he struggles writing in English is never seen as an EAL issue necessarily. It’s just that he is a struggling or reluctant writer.

A number of student teachers felt they were aware of the need to empathise with the experience of EAL pupils, and they foregrounded their concerns about the evident lack of detail in terms of practical pedagogical advice to meet the language and literacy needs of such pupils. These concerns were taken into consideration as we designed professional development resources for this project. The following extracts illustrate how student teachers expressed their anxieties about the lack of detailed input on how to respond effectively to EAL learners:

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I feel we are informed of theories and methods to overcome problems but we never see these/hear examples of these applied to the classroom environment. It is more just bullet point advice such as 'use picture books' and 'relate some lessons to their own cultures'. We are not given examples of picture books to use or how to follow these up with activities or how to incorporate their cultures into lessons that aren't just Geography.

There is not enough input on what we can actually do to support EAL learners, especially those who may be the only student who speaks their language in the class or the school. As a result, EAL learners who understand very little English end up getting ignored by teachers because we just don't know what to do with them.

The observation in the immediately preceding statement concerning EAL pupils being ignored by teachers in schools was echoed by another respondent who noted the isolation she observed EAL pupils experiencing in classrooms when neither pupils nor teachers spoke their languages:

There is a wide range of theories and strategies. What I feel hasn't been covered is if there is one EAL student of a language which no peer or teacher speaks. The student inevitably seems to result isolated, apathetic to lessons he can't understand, and a teacher who is forced to resort to 'Google Translate’ handouts as the only way to support and differentiate lessons. I feel this area needs to be targeted and hasn't been adequately answered.

Teacher Educators’ Reflections Chapter Five has described how the teacher educators in our study recognized their responsibilities in relation to EAL and presented the case of a participant who had begun as a teacher educator to ‘learn on the job’ by taking opportunities when in school to sit with EAL learners and work out for himself what strategies might help them to access the curriculum. At the same time, in general they expressed a lack of confidence in their own knowledge and in focus groups at both of the main research sites talked at some length about their own lack of experience, as mainstream teachers, with EAL learners. Participants not only spoke about their own lack of knowledge or confidence, but highlighted their uncertainty about how informed schools were in terms of supporting student teachers in developing the knowledge and skills required to meet the needs of EAL pupils. They perceived a lack of professional learning opportunities for teachers in schools:

I think the general perception in schools, and I'm not saying whether this can be justified or not, but the impression I get is a lot of teachers in the schools feel, feel that this is a new situation for them that they haven't been trained to deal with, and they haven't had the CPD input or, or provision that would, would enable them to develop these skills, and they've just been sort of left to get on with it. That may be quite unfair, but it's a perception they have.

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Participants from different routes to teacher preparation recognised the influence of the political climate in relation to matters of diversity and EAL and the impact that a diluted focus on EAL can have, including a failure to recognize the levels of anxiety experienced by student teachers concerning EAL:

And the wording of the NQT surveys is wholly politicised, isn't it? And I think those of us who work within ITE are very aware of that, and I think the questions relating to EAL, and to aspects of diversity, have become increasingly diluted. So really they're not necessarily measuring [these areas].

You know, the fact that for years we've had NQT surveys showing, you know, that this is an area newly qualified teachers worry about, but it's not picked up in the same way as the phonics was, you know, and all of that.

Opportunities for Professional Learning

Professional learning opportunities are key to enhancing the knowledge base of teachers and teacher educators and to transforming pedagogical practices for working in diverse educational contexts. Accordingly, participants were asked questions, not only in relation to their experience of working with EAL learners in schools, but in terms of their professional development opportunities for EAL. An extended excerpt from a focus group captures responses to these questions:

Interviewer: if you think yourselves back to when you were in schools yourselves. At that point did you have much experience of teaching pupils who had English as an additional language, or not? How was that experience for you, yourselves?

Teacher Educator 1: I had virtually none. Partly because, you know, it was a while ago, although it's not that long ago, it's 13 years since I was teaching in school. But also the nature of the schools I was working in at that time, they just didn’t have a significant population of pupils in that category at that point.

Teacher Educator 2: Similar experience for me as well.

Teacher Educator 3: Yeah, and, and for me. Same. Interviewer: And in all those years of working in schools and, you know, authorities, would you say you had any CPD or, you know, kind of further development in EAL, or was that something that, no?

Teacher Educator 1: Very little – to be perfectly honest, I can't remember. I think as part of my – when I did, did the NPQH qualification, the headship qualification which I have, we did have to spend some time in a multi, in a, it wasn't so much about EAL, it was about multi-cultural schools. And that is about the only focus I can remember. Although I did spend time in schools with, you know, a lot of pupils with EAL who had

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very strong practice established. But in terms of CPD, there might've been the odd staff meeting along the way.

Teacher Educator 2: I had no training at all, no. I think I've, I've actually taught children, particularly when I was overseas with very little experience and, you know, giving them one-to-one support with things, or giving them a teaching assistant to help and, and those sorts of things. But no, I haven't had any input at all CPD wise.

While there were many teacher educators who acknowledged that they had no systematic professional development around matters relating to EAL, one participant provided a contrasting view by drawing on her experiences of teaching overseas to demonstrate where she gained practical experience in teaching linguistically and culturally diverse learners?

Teacher Educator: However, I have quite a lot of experience in EAL –and teacher training, which I can tell you about later. I taught for 14 years in a primary school in X city after I graduated from Y university; and then after four years I went to work in Hong Kong where I gained a lot of practical, practice experience of teaching English as an additional language ‘cause, I mean, there everybody's, it's British schools you were in.

I would say the course I did in Hong Kong … I would say that was my best training. But my best training was really practice based, teaching children. You know, learning it as you're going along. But definitely that course had some of the best training, and I would say that is applicable to children in this country with EAL.

The findings in the preceding sections highlight how many student teachers and teacher educators across the teacher preparation routes feel that they lack confidence and requisite experience as they work to address pupils’ needs within linguistically and culturally diverse settings. Their statements are brave reflective insights into their experiences. It would appear that they often find themselves in weak positions as they seek to meet the language and literacy needs of EAL learners within contexts where high stakes testing and discourses of accountability are prevalent. The need to prioritize sustained and coherent professional development opportunities for teacher educators in schools and university settings is urgent. The lack of such opportunities would appear to have given rise to a distinct lack of confidence for many of the teacher educators in this study as they reflected on how they prepare student teachers to address the needs of EAL learners in schools. It is a matter of urgency to upgrade ITT and professional development programmes in order to address these gaps. We now turn in the concluding chapter to outline the resources that were informed by the central findings of the study. We then draw out what appear to be key implications for ITT and professional development programmes.

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Chapter 9: Resources, Key Findings and Recommendations Professional Development Resources A set of professional development resources were designed as an outcome of this project in order to address the reported needs across the data sets of teacher educators and student teachers studying and working across the different routes into teacher training. These resources were mainly constructed as professional development materials for teacher educators as this allowed us to shape student teacher learning at the core of their initial teacher education experiences. To achieve this we drew on the findings from the study, key areas of research within academic literature, and from our own previous work within the fields of teacher education and English as an additional language (Anderson et al, 2016b; Foley et al, 2013). This allowed both a bottom-up and a top-down approach to the development of professional learning materials. The underpinning conceptualization of learning, language and literacies across these resources was linked to matters relating to social justice. Given the increase in global migration and the fact that Anglophone countries have become places where complex social, cultural, linguistic and political issues intersect, we felt it was important to sensitize teacher educators to the experiences that pupils learning EAL often face in school contexts, where deficit views of them as language learners may limit their opportunities and potential for achievement (Kubota and Lin, 2009). We also felt it was important that the resources were informed by current areas of research. These considerations allowed us to focus on languages and literacies from a transformative, critical perspective in order to create conditions for teacher educators to consider issues of race, languages, literacies, cultures and identities. Many of these issues were evident in the data, though direct references to race and identity were either missing or limited during group and individual interviews, which is in itself a finding. In using a transformative critical literacies lens to design the resources we sought to replace monolingual standard literacies, and to enable teacher educators to recognise the often invisible literacies that EAL pupils and student teachers bring with them to the classroom. Such an approach addresses issues of power, identity, language and culture, and enhances the current literacy framework for the English curricular context. The aim was to make classroom literacies more representative of society and easily deployed for daily life, both inside and outside of the classroom. In terms of implementation at a programme level, our aim was to ensure that ‘new’ bodies of knowledge ‘fit’ into existing programmes and courses in order to enhance what is already being done. We adopted a ‘dual approach’ where a number of sessions would give a grounding in knowledge and strategies. The bulk of input and the requirements placed on student teachers for reflection and action would then be ‘infused throughout individual subjects, e.g., drama, mathematics, and importantly, across all of the core concerns of a Teacher Education programme. This approach requires a re-contextualisation of what is

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already being taught to include a more holistic, inclusionary perspective on languages and literacies and to enable teacher educators to provide opportunities for student teachers to plan for diversity. It also allows for, and indeed requires, a very subject-specific response to EAL issues, strategies and techniques. Each of the professional learning sessions use open-ended activities which aim to promote reflection on current practice, give clear pointers to classroom practices and activities, and encourage group discussion around the issues and learning points that are highlighted across the various themes. A short summary of the session content for each set of resources is outlined below: 1. Conceptualising EAL (1 half-day session) The aims of this half-day session are to engage teacher educators in a reflective process about the contexts for EAL in England in order to help them understand the current situation and current debates. Uncertainties expressed by teacher educators and student teachers across the data sets around EAL and languages directed us to see the importance of raising critical awareness of the range of languages and cultural experiences brought by EAL pupils to classroom settings. The role of bilingualism and multilingualism in education is also foregrounded as a way of enabling teacher educators to consider critically the implications of these issues for provision for EAL learners across the whole curriculum and for their own practices. 2. Talking and Thinking about Language (2 half-day sessions) Session one within this theme foregrounds the importance of developing knowledge about languages and of gaining an understanding of the cognitive demands of moving between languages. Exploratory approaches are used to examine differences across languages in structures and forms, and to consider the implications of these differences for day-to-day practice in multilingual classrooms. Attention is given to features of English that, experienced practitioners have found, may prove problematic to EAL pupils and to an exploration of how EAL pupils may be assisted to understand these features and deploy them appropriately. Activities to develop an understanding, and a degree of felt experience, of the demands of moving across languages are included. In addition, teacher educators are provided with opportunities to explore an English dialect in order to assist them in appreciating the variety of ‘Englishes’ that EAL pupils are likely to encounter. Session two uses exploratory approaches to understand language in use. The session engages teacher educators in experiential activities that illustrate the various challenges often experienced by EAL pupils, and indeed all pupils. There are opportunities to reflect on how to integrate language-focused activities into a variety of subject areas in order to support student teachers to meet the needs of EAL pupils. A focus on how to support academic language development in writing, along with activities that develop an understanding of how to move from simple to complex texts in writing are also a part of this session.

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3. Meeting Language and Literacy Needs (2 half-day sessions) Session one within this theme focuses on providing experiences for teacher educators to understand what a language barrier feels like as they engage in literacy practices. An exploration of how vocabulary develops for those learning an additional language, along with an understanding of the social and cultural meanings associated with words, enable participants to consider factors that aid or hinder comprehension as pupils engage with spoken, written, visual or digital texts. Session two develops this theme further by looking at subject literacies and learning in and through English. It moves teacher educators beyond vocabulary learning to consider the importance of talk to develop literacies across the curriculum. Language as a means of meaning-making is a core construct. The term ‘reading’ is used in its broader and more global sense to include skills that develop enquiry, inferencing, questioning and a critique of the social and cultural constructions related to a variety of texts. A focus that allows EAL pupils to engage in translanguaging to complete activities is foregrounded as an element of ‘good practice’. We turn now to the Recommendations, where we consider the question of how coherent professional development in the area of EAL for teacher educators in school and university settings might best be achieved; and draw out from our findings what appear to be key implications for initial teacher education and professional development programmes.

Recommendations A number of headline recommendations can be seen to flow from the findings of this study. These are outlined to address a range of audiences, i.e., teacher education providers, professional development providers, and policy makers. Teacher Education Providers and Policy Makers The students whom we surveyed and interviewed, drawn from different training routes and training sites, recognised the need for input concerning EAL across a broad front. Preceding sections have noted how the resources created within the study have aimed to address important gaps that the student teachers identified. Interviews with student teachers flagged up distinct disparity in the degree of their experience of working with EAL learners during their training period. The student teachers whom we surveyed were also coming with markedly contrasting levels of prior interaction with EAL learners. The teacher educators within our study in the main recognised a lack of confidence in their knowledge concerning EAL. An overview of the study’s findings does not support a simple, black-and-white deficit view of initial teacher education related to EAL; but it does show variation in the extent and adequacy of the coverage of EAL. In addition, the study provides a number of pointers as to how this situation may be addressed.

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Initial teacher education in the context of career-long learning: Before we set out these pointers to the enhancement of initial teacher education concerning EAL, it is important to place initial teacher education within a wider frame, as only the first stage in a career-long process of professional development and the enhancement of day-to-day practice. Attention needs to be given to how input concerning EAL in initial teacher education is aligned with the training that individuals receive during their period as newly qualified teachers, and indeed with schools’ general schemes of CPD in this area for all teachers. The Bell Foundation is itself well-placed to establish a working group that could create a detailed blueprint of how a more integrated, career-long approach to teacher education concerning EAL could be achieved.

From the margins to the centre: It can be argued that a shift in mind-set concerning EAL would greatly enhance both the education of student teachers entering the profession and CPD for serving teachers and teacher educators. Rather than viewing EAL as simply a specialised area of expertise that needs to be squeezed into a packed teacher education curriculum, the accent could rather be on assisting student teachers to make all lessons more accessible to the multilingual, multicultural classes that they will encounter in many English primary and secondary schools. Such a shift would conceptualise multilingualism and multiculturalism as the new norm, thus transforming a monolingual, English-only mainstream.

Professional Development Providers

Teacher education in schools: Given the shift in the balance of teacher education away from universities and towards schools, there is a need not only for teacher educators in universities and training agencies to be adequately prepared to guide student teachers to meet the needs of EAL pupils but also for this preparation to be extended to teachers within schools who have key mentoring and training responsibilities. Accordingly, the following paragraphs adopt a broad definition of the term ‘teacher educator’, using it to refer to staff in schools who have key mentoring and training roles as well as members of training institutions and agencies.

Teacher educators and EAL: Such a shift in mind-set clearly requires teacher educators themselves to engage in development activities, (underpinned by literature reviewed in this study), that raise their awareness of the needs of EAL learners and provide input on how these needs can best be met. Resources developed within the current project have been designed to broaden the knowledge, understanding and strategies of teacher educators as well as of student teachers.

A key challenge in taking ahead such a programme of ‘education for the educators’ is in finding mechanisms for the mutual sharing of expertise and resources between universities, other training providers and schools. As a preceding paragraph has advocated, there is a strong case for creating a more ‘joined-up’ approach to teacher education in relation to EAL and a national programme of development.

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EAL learners in initial teacher education programmes: The results of our surveys serve as a reminder that initial teacher education programmes themselves contain student teachers for whom English is an additional language. It is important that their needs are considered and the contributions they can make are recognised.

EAL within initial teacher education programmes - a way ahead - a ‘dual’ approach: Preceding survey and development work in Scotland on ITE and EAL led us to suggest that a ‘dual’ approach is taken to the development of EAL practice within teacher education programmes’ (Anderson, et al., 2016, p.183). In this dual approach a number of sessions would give a grounding in knowledge and strategies. The bulk of input and the requirements placed on students for reflection and action would then be ‘infused throughout individual subjects, e.g., drama, mathematics, and, importantly, across all of the core concerns of a Teacher Education programme, such as differentiation, feedback, assessment, group work, etc.’ (Anderson, et al., 2016, p.183). The findings of the current study can be seen to provide strong backing for adopting such a model. Such a ‘permeation’ of EAL throughout a teacher education programme can be seen to possess a number of advantages. Principally, it ensures that EAL is given a central place where the focus is on making all lessons accessible, rather than treating EAL as a ‘bolt-on’ addition to existing programmes. It also allows for, and indeed requires, a very subject-specific response to EAL issues, strategies and techniques. This would include attention to issues surrounding the assessment of EAL learners in individual subjects – a matter which the students in our first survey very much flagged up as one where they required guidance. Teacher Education Providers and Policy Makers: Central Matters While prevailing policy has prioritised integration and inclusion, little attention has been given to expanding the knowledge base of pre-service teachers that would enable them to address to the language and literacy needs of linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms (e.g. Anderson et al, 2016; Foley et al, 2013; Brentnall, 2015). It is therefore important for all concerned with teacher education to grapple with how we prepare student teachers for our future schools. The value position that we take is that any ‘core’ sessions on EAL for student teachers should foreground questions of social justice, equity and inclusion. Salient findings of this study highlight the importance of including the following messages and topics within the general sessions on EAL provided within a programme, and of reinforcing these messages throughout a programme.

As we have indicated earlier in this summary, there appears from our findings to be a need to convey more forcefully in initial teacher education the value of the use of home languages in the classroom.

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While one can expect that current teacher education programmes will include

knowledge about the English language to prepare student teachers to teach the grammar and spelling content of the National Curriculum, a strong argument can be made that it is important for trainee teachers to also have some wider knowledge about languages. They will be able to act in a more aware way towards EAL learners when they have a clear sense of how structures and forms differ across languages.

A more informed understanding of the challenges faced by EAL learners is also fostered when student teachers are given a direct experience of the cognitive and associated emotional demands of moving between languages. Activities can be provided which give student teachers a close approximation of the active problem-solving and inferencing that is customarily involved in moving between the structures and vocabulary of another language and those of English.

Student teachers will expand their understanding of literacy and be able to act more responsively towards EAL learners when they are assisted to reflect on the cultural knowledge and experience embedded within the texts used in classrooms, allowing them to recognise how differences and gaps in cultural knowledge impact on comprehension.

A similar point can be made in relation to vocabulary development where, as we have noted earlier, attention needs to be given to the importance of world knowledge, prior experience and the culturally specific meanings associated with words.

It is also desirable that student teachers appreciate that EAL learners face the task of learning Englishes, of mastering a local dialect as well as the ‘standard’ English employed in classrooms; and also consider the differences between the grammar of spoken and written English.

School experience: We recognise that it may be difficult in some regions to ensure that all student teachers interact with EAL pupils during their training period. However, it is clearly desirable that as far as is possible, student teachers do have such experience. When this cannot be put into practice, they can, as we have suggested in an earlier report: ‘[have] the vicarious experience of watching teachers in a range of classrooms interacting with EAL learners and then talking about their practice’ (Anderson et al., 2016, p.182) Such recordings would also be a valuable resource for all student teachers and better prepare them for the diversity that is now ‘the norm’.

Conclusion We conclude this study by recognizing that concepts of mainstreaming and inclusion are powerful engines that drive the need for all educators to develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions that allow them to become linguistically and culturally responsive to the needs of pupils learning EAL. It is important for teacher educators to receive the support and professional development opportunities that will enable them to prepare student teachers to

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achieve this informed responsiveness. Such preparation needs to be tied to the realities in today’s classrooms. The centrality of diverse languages, literacies, and cultures within schools makes such knowledge a fundamental requirement across all teacher-training routes. This requires a joined up, systematic approach that enables professionals in schools and universities to work collaboratively, despite the different programme philosophies, goals, and understanding of teaching and learning, in order to improve the quality of teacher education. Collaborations of this kind can break down the ‘silos’ that may exist in these domains and allows the expertise of the various participants across these settings to prepare teachers who are equipped to meet the needs of EAL pupils, thus enabling them to develop well-rounded literate lives.

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Glossary Classification and Framing These concepts come from Bernstein’s explorations of the social organisation and hierarchical nature of academic disciplines and their participants. ‘Classification’ refers to the boundaries that are established within and between academic subjects and is concerned with identifying how they are established and maintained. ‘Framing’ refers to the ways in which control is constructed and managed within and between disciplines through all the discourses, both spoken and written, that participants engage in. Cognitive and psycholinguistic approaches to Second Language Education An important distinction can be drawn between these approaches and more sociolinguistic approaches to language education. The first see humans as biologically predisposed to develop language whereas the second are more concerned with the ways in which humans use language in interaction with others and with the communities and societies in which they are situated. Thus, for cognitive linguists and psycholinguists, the emphasis is more on language as a system to be acquired and learned while for the sociolinguistically inclined, the emphasis is on language as social practice, on the ways in which people use language to do the things they want to do and the educational implications of this. Field, Habitus and Practice Bourdieu’s work aimed to develop a ‘theory of practice’ in sociology in order to overcome the rigid objective-subjective divide. His ideas relate to the ways in which power is negotiated and distributed in society. The first, ‘field’ refers to the settings in which social action takes place, where individuals interact and negotiate their relative positions. Closely related, ‘habitus’ is defined as a system of embodied dispositions that individuals develop in response to the objective conditions they encounter. Both of these concepts sit within the idea, key to Bourdieu’s theory of practice that individuals do not operate according to external rational criteria, but in response to implicit practical logic and bodily dispositions. Multilingualism The academic literature on multilingualism has grown exponentially over recent years. In the project, we use the term ‘multilingual’ to refer to societies where the use of different languages is a normal and unremarked part of daily life, and where individuals use their range of language skills and competences to communicate, achieve their purposes and construct their identities and to classrooms where teachers and learners have knowledge and experiences of other languages besides the one which is the medium of instruction. Region (as opposed to ‘discipline’) In discussion of classification and framing, Bernstein uses the notion of ‘region’ to describe and allow for changes to established academic disciplines. A ‘region’ is an inter-disciplinary or applied field which uses theories and practices from different disciplines and thus opens up new possibilities for theory, research and practice.